There you hit it on the head ~ “permanant residence” ~ Obama’s father was a foreign student here under a student visa. He was NOT a permanent resident, nor did he intend to be one. In fact, he wanted to be a big cheese in Kenya, returned there, and did well (compared to others, although not as well as he wanted to do). Man was killed in an auto accident in an age when only the richest and most powerful people in African had an opportunity to do so.
Using that Supreme Court decision as our guide, it’s pretty obvious that Obama, as his father’s son, had no claim to American citizenship.
Actually, it's not. Under the law in 1961, citizenship could only pass from an American citizen mother with a foreign father to a child born abroad if the mother had been resident in the US for a period of five years after the age of 14. Since she was under the age of 19, IF she gave birth outside of the US, her citizenship would not have passed to her child.
And Hawaii, at the time, had a provision to give a birth certificate for an unattended birth based upon attestation of witnesses and proof of the mother's residence in Hawaii. This is why the birth certificate is so central.
There was a time (1961 is part of that time) when a woman's domicile was determined by that of her husband.
A baby born to a nonresident female minor who was wife of a nonresident foreign student here under a student visa was, in 1961, clearly a foreign subject or citizen.
The applicable laws were changed later and not made retroactive so the standards of 1961 still apply.
Read Wu v. The USSC clearly specifies that people such as Obama were not citizens.