Presidential Conspiracy Theories: Chester Alan Arthur and the Birthers

[kensmind]

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution requires that, in order to be eligible to hold the office, a president must "be a natural-born citizen of the United States". Long before President Barack Obama was accused by a group of conspiracy theorists, dubbed as "birthers" by the media, of not being born in the United States, a similar

Comments

[sdu754]

Anyone who has a parent that is a US citizen is considered a natural-born citizen of the United States regardless of where they were born. So even if Obama were born in Kenya and Arthur were born in Canada, they would still be natural-born citizens of the United States. In fact, George Romney was born in Mexico, and nobody objected to his running for president in 1968.

Obama effectively used the birther movement to paint all of his critics as crazy conspiracy theorists.

[kensmind]

You make a good point, that Arthur's mother's status should have been enough to give him citizenship. Having said that though, I know that the Citizenship and Naturalization Act has been amended several times, so I'm unsure if that was the case in 1829 or 30, but I suspect that this is also a principle of international law.