In 2005 when I finalized my emigration from the United Kingdom, one of the documents I had to supply was a formal birth certificate or certified copy thereof.
Not having particularly organized parents, we didn't have my original birth certificate. Somewhere in the many moves the family had made it had been lost. So I made the journey back to the parish of my birth, paid a fee, proved who I was and obtained a certified copy.
Seeing arcticshadow's diary about Birthers reminded me of a major hole in the entire conspiracy theory.
You don't have to have the original certificate to be a citizen.
Whipped up by various Fox News and Conservative Blogs into a frenzy about Obama's Birth Certificate, many of these particular conspiracy theorists - Birthers, as they are known - have a single central argument.
Because Obama has never produced his original birth certificate there's no absolute proof that he's a US citizen, and thereby eligible to be president.
What they are ignoring, of course, is that Obama might be in the situation I was - that he simply doesn't have his original birth certificate. I wonder how many of the population don't have their absolutely original birth certificate. But all that is irrelevant. You don't have to be in actual possession of your original birth certificate to be a legitimate citizen.
One reason the woman in the video clip was saying she thought the certificate Obama had showed was a fake, was that it didn't have a raised seal on it the way her original did. This is actually innacurate, according to bipartisan group factcheck.org.
But the key to the argument is those two words: Certified Copy - which is what numerous organizations have seen of Obama's. And a certified copy is just that - a copy of the original record held (which isn't in certificate form, but in a list of births, deaths and marriages that day) by the parish of the person concerned, that confirms the original record exists and is accurate. That's all the law requires.
When you start to pin Birthers down on this, then they start to digress into other arguments. Another argument I've heard goes along the lines of "Obama didn't have two American Citizens as parents, therefore he's not really a citizen". I've actually seen this argument used on right wing blogs. Again, it's fundamentally flawed.
From Wikipedia:
In August 2008, the Rocky Mountain News ran an online article asserting that Obama is both a US and a Kenyan citizen. This turned out to be incorrect. Although the paper published an apology for the mistake, it provided more fuel for online rumors about Obama's eligibility for the presidency. FactCheck noted that Obama had indeed been a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies by virtue of his descent from a Kenyan father at a time when Kenya was a British colony. However, Kenya's constitution prohibits dual citizenship in adulthood. Obama had therefore automatically lost his Kenyan citizenship at age 21, in 1982, by failing to formally renounce any non-Kenyan citizenship and swear an oath of allegiance to Kenya.
Birthers claim - without any evidence - that purely because Obama could technically be a dual-citizen at birth, that means that he actually went with the other countries citizenship in adulthood, a claim that is quite plainly false. The two weaknesses in this argument rapidly become apparent: First, by admitting his dual citizenship, they are actually admitting that part of that citizenship is legitimately American, and secondly Kenyan law requires that to keep your citizenship you MUST take your oath of allegiance to Kenya by your twenty first birthday, and MUST renounce all other citizenships at the time you take your oath of allegiance. Since Obama has never taken the oath of allegiance to Kenya, that effectively means he's been stripped of his Kenyan citizenship - half of the dual citizenship - leaving just the other half valid, which, as I've already pointed out, is US citizenship.
Ultimately, Birthers - like Teabaggers - will never accept their view is wrong. In their minds, it's case closed that Obama's not a US citizen - no amount of evidence to the contrary will make them change their minds.
But the whole issue of Obama's birth has been settled, long ago, and no amount of complaining will change that. Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, in the state of Hawaii. He's a US citizen. He has been from the day he was born. This has been certified by those in public office whose job it is to certify such things. The rest, as they say, is history.