Dual Citizenship Makes Obama Ineligible Under Article II
This is a cross-post from TD Blog with permission. I recommend going to this site and reading all of the comments there. These people are great researchers.
Dual Citizenship Makes Obama Ineligible Under Article II
By Judah Benjamin, Guest Author
So, at long last, Senator Obama admits that he was born with Dual Citizenship:
From “Fight the Smears”, courtesy of Annenberg-owned Factcheck.org (did they think they were helping?)
“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.
Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”
Now nice Anti-Pumas, please admit that the Senator has been selling snake oil and you have been buying it. I said he was probably born with Dual Citizenship under the 1948 Act at the outset, and I wasn’t wrong. Likewise, I wasn’t wrong about the Kenyan Constitution and his Kenyan Citizenship. Don’t take any bets that I’m wrong about Indonesia. Or the US Constitution and what it means.
Please note that I, once again, state that I, personally, believe Obama was born in Hawaii and that it doesn’t affect my opinion on his Eligibility for the Office of POTUS at all. In my understanding Article II Requires that one be a “Natural Born Citizen”, and in terms of the Law as understood by the Framers, anyone with Dual Citizenship could not be “Natural Born”. It does not matter that they no longer hold that Citizenship, they fall into the same bracket as a “Naturalized Citizen” because they have/had Divided Allegiance. That is my view and I haven’t moved an inch on it.
However, the Kenyan Citizenship Issue may not be the main point here, WAS HE, OR WAS HE NOT, an INDONESIAN CITIZEN? The Senator isn’t saying, isn’t mentioning it, is trying to avoid producing any Paperwork at all. Why? If he is/was an Indonesian Citizen, too, the Senator’s entire narrative is a fiction and he should be ashamed of himself.
He’s lied about Kenya, at least by omission, for months/years, so why should I assume he isn’t lying about Indonesia? Note Kenyan Citizenship automatically lapses if it isn’t renewed at age 21, Indonesian Citizenship doesn’t. If he was an Indonesian Citizen he would have to actively repudiate that Citizenship. Did he? Has he? Because if he hasn’t, Senator Obama is Dual National Indonesian at this moment, subject to the Laws of BOTH Countries, equally.
That is true under US Law, Indonesian Law and International Law and until LAST YEAR Indonesia DID NOT Recognize Dual Citizenship and the USA did not Recognize that one could be a Dual US/Indonesian Citizen. It does not matter that the Senator was not Responsible for the change of Citizenship because he was a child when it happened. Governor Schwarzenegger was not Responsible for the fact that he was born in Austria, or that under Austrian Law he is not a US Citizen, or under the US Law and Rules he is not a Citizen of Austria.
Senator Obama needs to produce his Paperwork, all of it, not just a Certification of Live Birth from the State of Hawaii, but all his other Paperwork too.
So, the Senator WAS a Dual National. That is now an admitted fact, admitted by his own Campaign and by Annenberg. The Senator is a Constitutional Lawyer which means that he knows, and has always known, that he is probably Ineligible to Hold the Office of POTUS, or that, at the very least, there is a strong Legal Argument that that is the case. In turn, that means that as he lied about his Kenyan and British Citizenships he is probably lying about his Indonesian Citizenship.
I do not suppose that it was ever his intention to give up his US Citizenship and it does not matter to me one bit. It doesn’t matter to Indonesia either. If Lolo Soetoro adopted him he ceased to be a US Citizen in the mid 1960s, BY INDONESIAN LAW. He also ceased to be a Kenyan Citizen, BY INDONESIAN LAW. By Kenyan and US Law he retained his Original Citizenships, until his 21st Birthday. By Indonesian Law he could have given up Indonesian Citizenship at age 18, but did he? If he didn’t he was, albeit accidentally, displaying a Legal Intention to void his US Citizenship, since he knew he could not Legally hold both Citizenships.
Please don’t tell me that the US doesn’t have to concern itself with the Laws of Indonesia because, in this case, the US does have to do so. By the way, under US Law of another time the Senator would not have been a US Citizen at all, and he knows that.
If a Naturalized Citizen cannot hold the Office of POTUS because they previously held another Citizenship it is egregious, so far as I am concerned, that a Dual Citizen/Former Dual Citizen should claim to have a Legal Right to do so. I refer the reader to my Articles on Dual Citizenship and ask you to read the quotes from Blackstone. [TD NOTE: I will be re-posting all of Judah's work shortly].
This new material at “Fight the Smears” displays arrogance, hubris and bad faith, in my opinion. It is the Senator’s reaction to Phillip Berg’s Law Suit, and, basically, it amounts to an open admission of mens rea. He is flaunting his bad faith and in so doing destroys his own case.
UPDATE: We are adding the reference list to previous work by this blog as quickly as possible.
SEE THESE PREVIOUS ARTICLES:
Photo Documents Barry Soetoro: Indonesian Citizen, Muslim Religion by TexasDarlin (8/13/08)
Kenyan Citizenship Report Debunked by TexasDarlin (8/13/08)
Obama’s Dual Citizenship Disaster by TexasDarlin (8/10/08)
The Paper Trail: Obama’s Indonesian Background by Judah Benjamin (7/29/08)
Divided Loyalties: Obama’s Citizenship Problem, Part 2 by Judah Benjamin (7/25/08)
Divided Loyalties: Obama’s Citizenship Problem, Part 1 by Judah Benjamin (7/25/08)
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Comments
A person is born with a domicile of origin and it is usually that of his father, so Barack Obama is British from that perspective by virtue of pre-independence Kenya. But domicile and nationality are different concepts and I wonder if the blogger above has them mixed up. Your Constitution looks at nationality and not domicile, and there are a number of situations in the nineteenth century supporting that. I think we can probably omit the Kenyan or British connection as having significance under these rules, but we should look at the Indonesian one.
As you’ve detailed above, we simply do not know what nationality Barack Obama held when he was in Indonesia. Was he there as a visitor, resident or national?
To be fair, we need to inquire briefly into John McCain as well. He was born on a US base in the Panama Canal Zone to US parents. There is no question his domicile of origin is American. It is generally accepted that a US base is as good as US soil, though under public international law, I am not so sure. Regardless of that, it is likely he acquired an American nationality at the earliest possibility through his parents’ actions (e.g. registration at a consulate) and he has only ever sworn allegiance to the United States.
The words in the Constitution are ‘natural born citizen’. This was not a common term and still isn’t. They never defined it but because nationality was important to them, there is some strength for saying that they wished to exclude dual nationals. The problem back in those days was that countries did want to claim subjects as their own for two things: military draft, and for money (whatever they earned, countries wanted to tax) and it may have been preferable for a nation to have certainty over the allegiance of its subjects.
The fact is that the Founding Fathers were silent on this point and it has caused huge trouble for ages. My US history may be patchy but I do not think there was anything in the proceedings of the Convention that indicated what they meant.
But if they were silent, is there a clue in the Constitution itself? Can we say that because they didn’t say anything, they didn’t want this requirement to be stuck in 1787? I believe this is the case: that while the Constitution should be subject to very strict interpretations, what is not codified into it is meant to be regarded as living and moving with the times. These were smart guys, so if they wanted something to be strictly considered, they would have written it in. That is the beauty of this document: it is tight (on some things such as the separation of powers) and loose (on other things like how laws themselves work) at the same time.
If we go to Art. I, s. 8, Congress is empowered to establish naturalization rules, i.e. setting rules on what it takes to be an American national, and I believe the Founding Fathers expected these rules to change over time. It’s why they were not put into the Constitution itself.
That means we need to look at your immigration laws. Also, the idea of the birthright citizenship is well established in the US, and your Fourteenth Amendment is pretty clear in codifying that into your Constitution.
So in that real round-about way, we can conclude that Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen of the United States. We can conclude that John McCain is a natural-born citizen of the United States.
We’re only left with your original question of dual nationality, which we must return to your legislation with. Your Immigration and Nationality Act accepts dual nationals, and your Supreme Court has permitted them, too. So, after all that analysis, I personally would have to conclude that Barack Obama is eligible for the presidency even if he were a dual national.