Replies

I think it’s worth addressing now in terms of new legislation or even a Constitutional amendment if necessary, clarifying what sort of “proof” is required, and what the procedures and standing requirements for challenges are — in other words, effective going forward, not retroactively. What’s getting lost in the heated, but not terribly rational debates on this topic, is that there really is no way to prove when or where anyone was born or who their parents really were (unless the claimed parents are living and willing to submit to DNA testing, but I don’t know what law could legitimately be used to force the latter).

Different states have different laws re birth certificate issuance, and it used to be common for birth certificates to be issued showing adoptive parents as the natural parents. I don’t think all states actually require birth certificates, and I’m even more sure that many did not require them back in the 1960s. And if a child is born in a foreign country, to US citizen parents, the birth certificate issuance will be a matter of the laws of that country — should we really let other countries’ laws determine whether or not someone is eligible to be President of the United States? And several studies have shown that a very large percentage of babies born in some US hospitals (those few where the studies have been conducted) are not the genetic offspring of the fathers named on their birth certificates — and presumably very few of those children grow up knowing the father on their birth certificate isn’t their biological father.

Ultimately, the problem is that there is no way for any individual to actually know with certainty the details of their own birth. I’m told I was born in the US, but also that I was conceived in one Asian country and narrowly missed being born in another Asian country as my mother travelled back to the US. I have a birth certificate from a hospital in the US, but it doesn’t have my given name on it (official copies carry a footnote at the bottom showing the name that was given months later per an “addendum”). But do I actually know for sure that I was born there? Or could that have been a sister I never heard about, and who died in infancy, who was born in that hospital? Was I actually adopted as a replacement, from one of the several European countries that my parents also lived and travelled in around the same time?

Both of my (presumed) parents were US citizens living overseas as US government employees. But realizing that there’s no way that even I, with a pretty well-documented background and well-documented US citizen parents (at least I THINK they’re really my parents) can actually know with certainty that I was born in the US, I don’t see how President-elect Obama could possibly really know whether he was born in Hawaii or Kenya or somewhere else. He knows what he was always told when he was growing up, and knows (or can know) what’s on a Hawaiian birth certificate that carries the name he’s told he was given at birth and which he used at least as late as elementary school, but has no way of knowing whether any of it is really accurate information. Birth certificates are just pieces of paper.

I’m quite sure that there are thousands of children of Mexican and Central/South American immigrants here in the US who have been told by their parents that they were born here, and who believe they were born here, when in fact they were born in their parents’ native countries. Most probably don’t have birth certificates, but they have a birth date and alleged town/state (probably told they were born at home), and have plenty of people who will attest (truly or falsely) to having known them in the US since infancy or toddlerhood. When they reach an age when they really need a birth certificate for something, and realize they aren’t actually sure if they were born here, most will have no trouble getting a US birth certificate based on affidavits, if they really make up their minds to do it. And as long as this route is available for people who really were born here, to parents who for whatever reason opted for a home birth and declined to obtain a birth certificate, it’s available for people really weren’t born here.

The scope of the problem is huge, and obviously isn’t going to be resolved between now and January 20. So, yes, by all means we should pursue a clear legal framework for handling the problem, but not with regard to President-elect Obama.