The Annoyed Man wrote:Interesting... In my particular case, I was born in a private French hospital in Casablanca, Morocco. My father was a native born American citizen (born in Bismarck, North Dakota), and my mother was French. However, at that time (and I assume it continues today), treaties existed between the U.S. and France which permitted dual citizenship. Therefore, even though I was born with French citizenship by virtue of both having a French mother and being born in what was at the time French territory, I am also a natural born U.S. citizen.Kythas wrote:Not necessarily. I was born in a civilian hospital in Seoul to my dad, who was in the Army, and my mother was a South Korean citizen. As I was born premature, and the only two incubators in all of South Korea at the time were in a civilian hospital, that's where I was born. Because I was not born on a US military base, even though my dad is American, I was born a South Korean citizen and am now a naturalized US citizen, not a natural born US citizen. Therefore, I can't run for President.srothstein wrote:I have to admit that I agree with Annoyed Man on this issue. Obama is a natural born citizen since his mother was a citizen and all the rest is smoke and mirrors. But now I am curious as to why the SCOTUS would want to look further into it. I am going to have to read some breifs if I can and research it further.
Just because one of your parents is American doesn't mean you automatically are if you're born on foreign soil. Note that US military installations abroad are considered American soil, as are embassies.
In fact according to one treaty between France and the U.S., military service for either[i/] nation by a dual citizen would fulfill any military obligations for both nations. At the time I was of military service age, we still had a draft (my lottery number was 339 in 1970), and France had mandatory military service for all 18 year olds. I was never drafted nor did I serve in any branch of the U.S. military. At the time, that meant that I was required to serve in the French army - although I didn't know it at the time. I've lived almost my entire life in the U.S.; consider myself an American; and speak with bit of a southern drawl. In the 1980s, one of my two younger brothers and I learned that we had been tried in absentia in France for draft evasion, and sentenced to prison. It required filling out a bunch of paperwork for the French Consul in Los Angeles to get rid of the problem. In true French fashion, rather than admit that they had made a mistake, they simply changed their paperwork to show that we had been drafted, and then released. So somewhere in a French archive, there exists a record of my military service in the French army, even though I have no recollection of it.
Go figure... It's a French thing...
Don't you remember, you joined the French Army and immediately surrendered.
