Why did your Dad have to naturalize? I had a baby with my European first husband in Europe and my son was a natural born American from the start. He had an American passport from the time he was a few months old.
I just looked closely at my father’s foreign birth document from a South American US Consulate: US State Dept. Form 240: Titled: line 1 “Report of Birth,” line 2 “Child Born Abroad of an American Father:” (His father was not American)
Very interesting (from the form 240 document): First, his mother was recorded correctly as American and father as German (OK). However, the record fields for his father’s info(passport no. etc) repeat his mother’s information exactly in the father’s section of the document. Summary: The form was incorrectly filled out (!), which may explain why he had to naturalize upon return to the US at age 2.
So here’s question: Did the State Dept. have procedures for handling the documentation of a foreign birth on Form 240 with questionable US citizenship (e.g. repeat the one valid citizen’s info in two places as a code)? A copy of Form 240 was routinely sent to Washington, and the overseas consulates may have filled the form out with defects to let citizenship issue be handled stateside (at least in that era). Any State Dept retirees reading this?
At Obama’s mother’s age, if she was overseas, she likely entered the consulate and started the form 240 process, but would have immediately run in to the defect issue with the case officer (father was not American). Perhaps the case officer did the same thing as with my Grandmother: filled the form out with defects to capture the birth (Mother’s info in both father/mother fields). If so, there is a copy in a vault in Washington and maybe in the HI files (FOIA will work in Washington). There may also be a record of the visit in the consulate files (again, if she was overseas at all).