“If Obama did NOT do this and ACTED as a foreign national, then he had no claim to U.S. citizenship that could be protected.”
Wrong again. It takes a positive renunciation - swearing an oath in person, normally while outside the USA. Apart from that, there is conviction of treason, holding a policy-making level position in a foreign government and taking up arms against the US.
That is pretty much it. Period.
“It did NOT protect children from losing citizenship via adoption to a foreign national. The courts might intervene...”
The Supreme Court had already intervened in Perkins v Elg, many years before Obama was born. This isn’t open to dispute. You don’t get to make up facts.
“4. It has long been a recognized principle in this country that, if a child born here is taken during minority to the country of his parents’ origin, where his parents resume their former allegiance, he does not thereby lose his citizenship in the United States provided that, on attaining majority, he elects to retain that citizenship and to return to the United States to assume its duties.”
Obama returned to the US at 10. He has never taken up residence outside the USA. He has not taken up arms against the USA, nor has he been convicted of treason by a US court. He has not renounced his US citizenship with a sworn oath and left the USA. That means he is still a US citizen. Nothing about Indonesia changes that in any way.
Elg wasn’t adopted. There was also a treaty involved, which I pointed out earlier. The ‘principle’ you cited doesn’t deal with an adoptive parent who is returning to his home country. Also, such a parent is not ‘resuming’ a former allegiance because the parent in question did not have U.S. allegiance. In Elg, the parent DID have U.S. allegiance. Lolo Soetoro did not.
I’ve already pointed out earlier in this thread that the so-called ‘principle’ was NOT recognized in WKA; “neither he nor his parents acting for him ever renounced his allegiance to the United States ...” This acknowledges that this court thinks that WKA’s parents could have done something to renounce their child’s allegiance.
If you go to the U.S. State Department website on Adoptions, it says, “A child being adopted from the United States to another Convention country retains his/her U.S. citizenship. He or she may also acquire the citizenship of the prospective adoptive parents depending on the citizenship status of the parents and the laws of the other Convention country.” Indonesia is not a Convention country. As this is written, it would indicate that those children adopted from the United States to a non-Convention country do not necessarily retain U.S. citizenship; likely because the state department cannot protect U.S. citizenship in non-Convention countries.
Yes, Obama appears to have returned to live with his grandparents, but it may have been as Indonesian citizen, which we have to assume since the only documentation available for that time period says he was an Indonesian citizen and there’s no documentation to show that he gained or resumed U.S. citizenship. Feel free to find some.