A federal immigration judge yesterday granted Onyango “Omar” Obama, the uncle of President Barack Obama, permission to stay in the United States, after a hearing in which the 69-year-old Kenyan, who has resided in the US for around 50 years, invoked the name of the President no less than six times.
The ruling was issued from the bench by US immigration Judge Leonard I Shapiro, who said that he believed Onyango Obama was a good neighbor, a gentleman, met the criteria for a green card and paid his taxes. “Welcome to America,” the judge told him. Onyango Obama testified during the hearing that “I do have a nephew. He’s the President of the United States,” and also contradicted the assertion of the White House that the President had never actually met him, claiming that he lived with him for three weeks in Cambridge when the future President was studying at Harvard Law School during the late 1980s.
Shapiro says that his decision was based upon a federal immigration law that enables people who have resided in the United States since before 1972 to put in an application for permanent residency. After the ruling Onyango thanked the judge for his decision.
Onyango Obama came to the United States back in 1963, with the aid of President Obama’s father, under a student US visa, which he renewed before it eventually expired in 1970, after which he has not been given any US immigration rights.