Obama's dad told INS baby would be adopted

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WASHINGTON, July 7 (UPI) -- Barack Obama's father told U.S. immigration officials that he and his wife planned to put the future president up for adoption, a document shows.

At the time, Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan national, was seeking an extension of his student visa, the Boston Globe reported Thursday. A memo by Lyle H. Dahling, an official in the Honolulu office of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, details a conversation months before Obama was born in 1961.

"Subject got his USC wife 'Hapai' and although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away,'' Dahling wrote, using shorthand for U.S. citizen and the Hawaiian word for pregnant.

Immigration officials were concerned because they were unsure if Obama Sr. was divorced from a wife in Kenya.

Relatives say Obama's father lied about adoption plans to keep his visa.

"I never heard any talk of adoption whatsoever,'' said Charles Payne, brother of Obama's grandmother. "Ann decided she had done this and this was her child and she was going to take care of him."

A writer working on a biography of Obama's father obtained the immigration documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.