Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

Wait, maybe I am confused, but doesn't that right there negate the whole "Obama was born in Kenya" mythical problem, anyway?

They're whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite.

Good luck with that.

Except it states "at least one" parent. It doesn't say two.

Uh-huh. Nobody on the political right, media included, never ever, ever claimed or suggested otherwise, right?

You, sincerely, are a tool factory.

What is the "it" you are referring to? If one parent is not a US citizen, but one is, the one that is has to meet a residency and age requirement. The specifics of that requirement have changed over the years as new legislation has passed, but at the time Obama was born, his mother did not meet that requirement under the laws at the time and thus he could not be a natural born citizen unless he was born in the US.

That is why the details in his birth certificate were important in his case, while they were not important in the case of say John McCain, or George Romney. In the same way that such a document certainly would have been demanded in the case of Chester Arthur, had birth certificates been generated in the state of Vermont when he was born. Obama is not a special unique snowflake in this. There have been several challenges made to the natural born citizenship status of presidential candidates. Obama is simply the only one for whom a birth certificate was both available and was relevant to the question of natural born citizenship.

Is this really an argument you guys are going to keep clinging to? What's the point? It's a done deal. He did, eventually, provide the requested documentation. Why are we even arguing about this?

Your quote, which stated:



But I didn't go farther than that, for research.

I guess. It's a terrible argument to rehash though, there's no win condition for the Birthers here. They got laughed out of court, proven wrong and, even if they were magically proven right somehow, that just means that Obama took them for a ride for eight years. You'd think all these people would have slunk off defeated by now but, eh, I guess some of them are weird enough to want to keep going down that rabbit hole over and over again.

My new favorite hashtag: #GOPDnD

Ah. Ok. It says "most likely include" and "at least one parent". Both of George Romney's parents were US citizens though, so he was even more clear.

And BTW, the wiggle room in "most likely include" regarding "at least one parent" is the case that applies to Obama, and not to Romney. As I've mentioned several times now. Romney was born to two US citizens who were living/working as missionaries in Mexico when he was born. The fact that he was born in Mexico was never in doubt, thus there was no need to see a birth certificate to prove anything. And in his case, since both his parents were US citizens, he was considered a US citizen. Yeah, the statement in the quote is awkward, but it's designed to be complete. Two parents who are US citizens is included in the set of "at least one parent who was a US citizen".

The wiggle room is the bit that I mentioned earlier, and which changed over time. It's the immigration law itself, specifically as it regards a person born to one US citizen and one foreign national. In that case, there's an age and residency requirement for the US citizen parent in order for the child to be a citizen at birth. Since Obama's mother failed to meet that requirement when he was born (she was too young, being only 18 at the time), she could not pass citizenship at birth to Obama by that statue. And thus, in Obama's case (but not in Romney's case, or McCain's case), the question of whether he was born on US soil was very important. The others were not born on US soil. We know they were not born on US soil. The issue of where they were born was not actually relevant to determining their status as natural born citizens, so there was no need to examine their full birth documentation.

There are multiple ways one can be considered a natural born citizen. Thus, there are different avenues to make that determination, depending on the specifics of the person in question. Both McCain and Romney were born to two US citizens. Thus, under US immigration law, they were automatically US citizens at birth, regardless of where they were born. Obama was born to one US citizen and one foreign national, and thus fell into a different category and required different documentation. Is that really so hard to understand?

I guess it's a *really* good thing that a Cuban-Canadian wasn't nominated.

Yeah. Funny thing about that. Cruz fell into the same "born of one US citizen and one foreign national" category. However, in the case of Cruz, his mother (the US citizen) did met the age and residency period requirements under the relevant immigration statute, where Obama's mother did not. Thus, just as with McCain and Romney, the fact that he was born outside the US did not have any relevance to his natural born citizenship status.

It's not surprising that the only person out of this set for whom a birth certificate was demanded was the one person for whom actually being born in the US was necessary to meet that criteria. It is, in fact, quite reasonable for that to be the case. We don't need to see Cruz's birth certificate because we know he was born outside the US. There's zero information in there relevant to the question at hand. Ditto with George Romney. Ditto with John McCain.

Didn't someone recently say something about personal attacks and "basically losing" arguments?