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I’m going to weigh in on this as my daughter and son-in-law are both employed overseas in a U.S. embassy with the U.S. state department. My daughter herself with her job deals with citizenship and visa requirements. She pointed me to the section regarding citizenship. As you can imagine this comes up frequently with those U.S. citizens serving our country abroad in foreign service.

According to the State Department “A child born abroad to two U.S. married citizen parents acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under section 301(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). One of the parents MUST have resided in the U.S. prior to the child’s birth. No specific period of time for such prior residence is required.”

This was further ammended by congress to insure “natural born” status for those children whose U.S. Citizen parents are employed either in the military or foreign service for the U.S. government. This would be the case for John McCain as his parents were serving in the military in the canal zone in 1936.

In addition regarding McCain, under Section 303 of the INA it states: “SEC. 303. [8 U.S.C. 1403]

(a) Any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this Act, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.

(b) Any person born in the Republic of Panama on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this Act, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States employed by the Government of the United States or by the Panama Railroad Company, or its successor in title, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.

Its important to remember the the canal zone prior to 1999 was U.S. TERRITORY.

Therefore its my understanding both legally and within our own gov’s state deparment that even if McCain were born outside the military base in 1936, he was STILL BORN IN U.S. TERRITORY. Even if that is challenged he is still natural born because his parents were in the military while living in Panama. Thus he is natural born in every aspect and qualifies to be President.

To suggest otherwise, is to penalize all children of U.S. military personnel or government workers serving within the foreign service and deny them the right to serve their country in political office. That would be absurd. You would be in effect saying, “You can serve your country in the military, but if you give birth, your child won’t have all the same rights as you!”

McCain’s qualifications to be President is settled as far as I’m concerned because my daughter maintains that birth certificates issued for the children born overseas to married foreign service personnel will state ‘natural born’ citizen!

Of course this does not apply to Obama if he were born in Kenya. Even though his mother was a citizen his father was not, there is the real possibility he was born out of wedlock due to Dad Obama having another wife, and a whole new set of rules apply when one is born out of wedlock PLUS the addition of a non-U.S. citizen parent in the mix. There is also the possibility that when adopted by Soetoro his U.S. citizenship was voluntarily forfeited in order to obtain Indonesian citizenship which is another can of worms.