Civic Education

I read in the New York Times the other day a quick wire report from the Associated Press about the Arizona State House voting on legislation that would require President Obama to produce his birth certificate in order to get on the ballot in 2012. Let's set aside for a moment the fact that there are far more pressing issues for this legislative body to focus on.

This topic incenses me to no end. While I later learned that this was a slight misrepresentation--the legislation requires ALL candidates to demonstrate proof, not just President Obama--it reminded me of the frustration I have with this so-called "birthers" movement. It's part of a simple, but important element of civic education; what are the ways a person can be a natural born citizen of the United States?

There are two ways to be a "natural-born" citizen of the United States:
1) You are born in the United States or a territory thereof (i.e., Guam, or a foreign military base).
2) You are born anywhere else in the world and at least one of your parents is a United States citizen.

As a reminder, you cannot serve as President of the United States unless you are a natural-born citizen. So the deal with the "birthers" is that they don't believe that President Obama was born here and therefore he can't be President. The reality is that it doesn't matter if he was or was not (though he was and Hawaii had to stop responding to requests for his birth certificate because they couldn't handle the demand), because his mother was born in Kansas.

I wasn't going to share this, but I do still watch General Hospital. I figured after you know about my dismal dating failures, really, you might as well know that I still watch a daily soap opera. The reason I bring this up is because the writers of General Hospital also need to learn this important lesson, because they keep creating story lines where characters are worried about the "INS" (which, by the way, is now called "ICE") deporting them because of a visa about to expire. This would be OK if each of these characters did not also have a parent who's an American--admittedly, I could be reading way too much into this, but this kind of storyline perpetuates a myth that is becoming dangerous.