Presidential candidates whose eligibility was questioned While every President and Vice President to date (as of 2009) is widely believed either to have been a citizen at the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 or to have been born in the United States, there have been some presidential candidates who were either born or suspected of having been born outside the U. S. states.[21] This does not necessarily mean that they were ineligible, only that there was some controversy (usually minor) about their eligibility, which may have been resolved in favor of eligibility.[22]
 * Chester A. Arthur (1829-1886), 21st president of the United States, was rumored to have been born in Canada.[23] This was never demonstrated by his political opponents, although they raised the objection during his vice-presidential campaign. He was born to a U. S. citizen mother and a father from Ireland, who was eventually naturalized as a U. S. citizen. Arthur was sworn in as president when President Garfield died after being shot. Since his Irish father William naturalized 14 years after Chester Arthur's birth,[24] his citizenship status at birth is unclear, because only since the 1868 ratification of the 14th Amendment any person born on United States territory was considered a born U. S. citizen, unequivocally after United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). Chester A. Arthur held at least Irish citizenship through jus sanguinis of his father.
 * George Romney (1907-1995), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 1968, was born in Mexico to U. S. parents. Romney’s grandfather had emigrated to Mexico in 1886 with his three wives and children after Utah outlawed polygamy. Romney's monogamous parents retained their U. S. citizenship and returned to the United States with him in 1912. Romney never received Mexican citizenship, because the country's nationality laws had been restricted to jus-sanguinis statutes due to prevailing politics aimed against American settlers.[25]
 * Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) was born in Phoenix, in what was then the Arizona Territory of the United States. During his presidential campaign in 1964, there was a minor controversy over Goldwater's having been born in Arizona when it was not yet a state.[23]
 * Lowell Weicker (1931-), the former Connecticut Senator, Representative, and Governor, entered the race for the Republican party nomination of 1980 but dropped out before voting in the primaries began. He was born in Paris, France to parents who were U. S. citizens. His father was an executive for E. R. Squibb & Sons and his mother was the Indian-born daughter of a British general.[26]
 * Róger Calero (1969-) was born in Nicaragua and ran as the Socialist Worker's Party presidential candidate in 2004 and 2008. In 2008, Calero appeared on the ballot in Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Vermont.[27]
 * John McCain (1936-), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 2000 and was the Republican nominee in 2008, was born in Colón, Panama,[28] in the Panama Canal Zone[29] of two U. S. parents, who were at the time serving at the Coco Solo Naval Air Station.[30] In March 2008 McCain was held eligible for Presidency in an opinion paper by former Solicitor General Ted Olson and Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe.[31] In April 2008 the U. S. Senate approved a non-binding resolution recognizing McCain's status as a natural born citizen.[32] In September 2008 U. S. District Judge William Alsup stated obiter in his ruling that it is "highly probable" that McCain is a natural born citizen, although he acknowledged the possibility that the applicable laws had been enacted after the fact and applied only retroactively.[33] These views have been criticized by Gabriel J. Chin, Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, who argues that McCain was at birth a citizen of Panama and was only retroactively declared a born citizen under 8 U. S. C. § 1403, because at the time of his birth and with regard to the Canal Zone the Supreme Court's Insular Cases overruled the Naturalization Act of 1795, which would otherwise have declared McCain a U. S. citizen immediately at birth.[34] In any case, the US Foreign Affairs Manual states that "it has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U. S. citizenship by birth abroad to U. S. citizens is a natural born citizen […]".[35] In Rogers v. Bellei the Supreme Court only ruled that "children born abroad of Americans are not citizens within the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment", and didn't elaborate on the natural born status.[36]
 * Barack Obama (1961-), 44th president of the United States, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a U. S. citizen mother and a British subject father from the Kenya Colony of the United Kingdom. Before and after the 2008 presidential election, the argument was made that he was not a natural born citizen. On June 12, 2008, the Obama presidential campaign launched a website to counter what it described as smears by his opponents,[37] including these challenges to his eligibility. The most prominent issue raised against Obama was the assertion that he was not actually born in Hawaii. In two other lawsuits, the plaintiffs argued that it was irrelevant whether he was born in Hawaii,[38] but argued instead that he was nevertheless not a natural born citizen because his citizenship at birth was governed by the British Nationality Act.[39] As of January 22, 2009, the relevant courts have either denied all applications or declined to render a judgment due to lack of jurisdiction. Some of the cases have been dismissed because of the plaintiff's lack of standing.[citation needed] [edit] Proposed constitutional amendments More than two dozen proposed constitutional amendments have been introduced in Congress to relax the restriction.[40] Two of the more well known were introduced by Representative Jonathan Bingham in 1974, to allow for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to become eligible,[41] and the Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment by Senator Orrin Hatch in 2003, to allow eligibility for Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger.[40] The Bingman amendment would have also made clear the eligibility of those born abroad to U. S. parents,[41] while the Hatch one would have allowed those who have been naturalized citizens for twenty years to be eligible.[40]