Statehood opponents: Hawaii-born Obama ineligible for presidency

Some Native Hawaiians think island-born Barack Obama can't be president of the United States because he was born in an independent sovereign nation _ the Hawaiian Kingdom.

A few island independence advocates claim that Hawaii legally remains a foreign country today, making Obama and hundreds of thousands of others born in the islands over the past 50 years not "natural born" citizens or eligible to be president under the U.S. Constitution.

Their claim won't go far though: Obama was born here in 1961, a year after Hawaii got its star on the flag just short of two years after statehood.

"Obama was born in the Hawaiian kingdom," said Leon Siu, a Native Hawaiian and musician who brought up the issue in a column he wrote on a news Web site. "Not only was the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom illegal, it was admitted to be illegal by the United States."

Siu was referring to the "apology resolution" passed by Congress in 1993 acknowledging wrongdoing in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy 100 years before and recognizing the inherent sovereignty of the indigenous islanders over their land.

John McCain has faced more questions than Obama over whether he meets the legal requirement to qualify for America's highest office because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936.

Both McCain and Obama appear to qualify for the presidency because they were born in United States' lands, said University of Hawaii constitutional law professor Jon Van Dyke.

"It would be unlikely that any court would take seriously an argument that Senator Obama was not a natural-born citizen," he said. "For the moment, Hawaii is a state ... and the people of Hawaii taken as a whole seem not to be seeking secession, as a few people are."

Even those who believe in Hawaii's inherent sovereignty do not deny that the world recognizes it as part of the United States, allowing their argument no impact on the presidential election.

People who consider themselves part of a Hawaiian nation do not need to get involved in U.S. politics anyway, said Jonathan Osorio at the University of Hawaii's Center for Hawaiian Studies.

"We don't have to get involved in it because it's the Americans' problem," Osorio said. "Why should we care if this is an election that is for the United States and not Hawaiian nationals?"

Obama supports a proposal pending in the Senate that would formally recognize Native Hawaiians as an indigenous people, but he is definitely a U.S. citizen eligible to become president, said campaign spokeswoman Shannon Gilson.

"The constitutionality of being Hawaiian born and being a citizen is pretty clear," she said.

Siu maintains that Obama's actions in the Senate show he takes the citizenship issue seriously.

Obama is co-sponsoring a bill meant to clarify McCain's eligibility by defining a "natural-born citizen" as anyone born to any U.S. citizen while serving in the active or reserve components of the U.S. armed forces.

If questions arise about Obama's citizenship, he could count on similar accommodations from his fellow senators, said Siu, who has revoked his U.S. citizenship.

"The fact that he may be trying to cover some bases here means there's at least some seriousness to the allegations that we're an independent nation," Siu said. "I don't think it's going to affect the election at all though."