Two Classes of U.S. Citizens

While there was a good deal of controversy about President Obama's birthplace, there is no doubt that having been born in a U.S. state, he has a greater right to citizenship then say, Senator John McCain.

Senator McCain was not born in the United States, but in a U.S. territory. At the time, the status of people born in that territory was subject to some dispute, and it wasn't until later legislation was passed that it became clear that children born to U.S. citizens in the Panama Canal Zone would have the right to U.S. citizenship.

This right was not granted to everyone born in the Canal Zone. If your parents were Colombian, Panamanian or Barbadian—as many of the Canal workers were—there was no right to U.S. citizenship at all.
Panama, it should be remembered, was a department of Colombia until 1903. The United States threw its military might behind those Panamanian separatists who offered a better deal than the democratically-elected Colombian congress.

While legislation was quickly enacted to deal with day-to-day life in the Canal Zone—including founding a church(!)—the question of citizenship was not resolved until the 1930's.

Until 1967, it seemed, there was only one class of U.S. citizens. You could lose your citizenship by making a declaration of loyalty to another state, serving in its military or voting in an election.

But in that year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253, which held that there are two classes of citizens: one class, like President Obama, holds citizenship by and under the authority of the Constitution. The other, like Senator McCain, holds citizenship through a mere statutory grant.

Afroyim traveled to Israel and voted in an election. The State Department tried to revoke his citizenship. Afroyim was born in the United States, and while the Constitution describes how you can acquire citizenship, it says nothing about losing it.

So the State Department's efforts to deprive Afroyim of his citizenship failed. For the first time in American history, it was possible to hold dual American nationality. The distinction continues today.

For this reason, Senator McCain, and those like him, could lose their citizenship more easily than President Obama.