Romney Releases Birth Certificate, Stirs Dad's Controversy

Mitt Romney's campaign has released a birth certificate that details a foreign-born presidential candidate: Mitt's father, George. Romney's birth certificate, which his campaign has released to Reuters, states that Mitt was born in Detroit in 1947 and his father, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in 1968, was born in Mexico. As Donald Trump once again tries to stir up the birther issue, Romney's document is a reminder that his father faced a very similar controversy, Reuters notes.

As early as 1967, Democratic members of Congress were questioning whether George Romney was eligible to run for president, leading to numerous legal arguments which concluded that Romney—whose parents were American citizens who moved to a polygamous Mormon colony in Mexico—was indeed a "natural born citizen." The Congressional Research Service issued a paper saying the legal meaning of natural born citizen "most likely" included anybody born out of the US with at least one parent who was an American citizen. The elder Romney's own take, via a written statement from his records: "I am a natural born citizen. My parents were American citizens. I was a citizen at birth." (More Mitt Romney stories.)