The bigamy angle runs afoul of the divorce proceedings, which are publicly documented. There is a stature somewhere, I forget where at the moment, in which the government/s are permitted to assume the birth certification of the father’s name is legitimate whether or not the named birth father is false. The legal father does not need to be the biological father for the purposees of Hawaii’s birth certification and divorce proceedings. IIRC, the statutes are Hawaiian.
The U.S. Department of State has some other things to say about births out of wedlock for births abroad.
7 FAM 1133.4-3 Birth Out of Wedlock to American Mother
(TL:CON-68; 04-01-1998)
a. Claims Under Section 309(c) INA: A child born abroad out of wedlock on or after December 24, 1952, to a U.S. citizen mother acquires U.S. citizenship if the mother was physically present continuously for 1 year in the United States or its outlying possessions at any time prior to the child’s birth. This did not change under any of the amendments to Section 309 INA. Thus a woman who had spent only a very short time every year outside the United States would be unable to transmit citizenship under section 309(c) INA even though she might have qualified to transmit U.S. citizenship under section 301(g) INA if she had been married to the father of the child. The 1966 amendment to section 301 INA allowing members of the U.S. armed forces, employees of the U.S. Government and certain international organizations, and their dependents to count certain periods outside the United States as U.S. physical presence does not apply to section 309(c) INA. For this reason, the mother of a child born out of wedlock cannot use time spent abroad as a military dependent, for example, to satisfy all or part of the requirement of continuous physical presence in the United States for 1 year. Subsequent legitimation or the establishment of a legal relationship between an alien father and a person who acquired U.S. citizenship at birth under section 309(c) does not alter that person’s citizenship.
b. Claims under Old 309(a): Prior to the November 14, 1986, amendments to section 309(a), section 309(a) did not apply exclusively to the out of wedlock children of U.S. citizen fathers, but could also be applied to the out of wedlock children of U.S. citizen mothers. As a result, a person born out of wedlock to a U.S. citizen mother who could not transmit
U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual Volume 7 - Consular Affairs
7 FAM 1130 Page 40 of 81
citizenship under section 309(c) because she had not been physically present in the United States or outlying possessions for the continuous 1-year period may claim citizenship under old 309(a). As discussed previously, under old 309(a) the child’s paternity must have been established by legitimation before the child’s 21st birthday. If this condition is met, old 309(a) permits acquisition through section 301(g) (formerly 301(a)(7)), which requires that the citizen parent (mother or father), before the child’s birth, have amassed the 10 years of U.S. physical presence, including 5 after age 14. Persons born out of wedlock to alien fathers and U.S. citizen mothers on or after November 14, 1986 cannot claim citizenship under 309(a) because new 309(a) requires that the father have been a U.S. citizen at the time of the child’s birth.
c. Retention requirements: The retention requirements of former section 301(b) INA did not apply to children who acquired U.S. citizenship under section 309(c) INA by birth out of wedlock to American mothers.
The Obama Administration may have struggled to assert the claim of a jus soli birth in Hawaii in order to employ the above 7 FAM 1130 provisions for a birth out of wedlock within the United States, instead of abroad for a mother 1 year underage.
Paternity for state law child support purposes (whether the father is on the BC or not) does not dictate paternity as “governed by the 1948 BNA” nor does HI paternity establish legal marriage if contradicted by the bigamy provisions of the Kenya marriage act, so HI cannot confer UK citizenship nor legal UK paternity on Barry.
That means that HI paternity law cannot make Barry a dual citizen of the US and UK. IMO that is the key constitutional issue distinguished in the Minor case, i.e NBCs vs "aliens or foreigners." A baby in US history back to the founders with only an unmarried US citizen mother has no legal father for citizenship purposes, neither US citizen father nor foreign father, IIRC. In recent years "the disabilities of bastardy" have been removed for all citizens...but SCOTUS has never ruled on how that effects NBC status in a case like Barry's.