Claim: A 1981 Columbia University student ID card identifies Barack Obama as a foreign student named Barry Soetoro.
Example:[Collected via e-mail, February 2012]
An e-mail is now being circulated which shows a picture of Obama's Columbia ID card, with his picture and the name Barry Soetoro, and at the bottom is printed FOREIGN STUDENT.
ANY RESEARCH ON THIS? Could this be the reason his "classmates" don't remember him, or why his records can't be found? Perhaps he was not even "Barack Obama" at the time!
Origins: Numerous rumors have been circulated over the years claiming that Barack Obama attended college in the United States as a foreign student and/or under the name Barry Soetoro (the latter reflecting the surname of his Indonesian stepfather), evidence which would supposedly demonstrate that at some point in his life Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen and is therefore ineligible to hold the office of President of the United States. The image displayed here of a purported 1981 Columbia University student ID card identifying Barack Obama as a "foreign student" named "Barry Soetoro" is yet another entry in this vein.
However, the ID card pictured above is not a real Columbia University student ID issued to Barack Obama (under any name), nor does it reflect the appearance of student ID cards used by that institution during the time Barack Obama was a student there from 1981-83. (The digital ID card format shown here wasn't introduced at Columbia until 1996). This image is merely an altered version of a Columbia University ID card issued to another student in 1998:
