Baruch Gad

#News A BBC News article published in 2019 said that Rep. Ilhan Omar was born in Mogadishu in 1981 and described her as a 37-year-old mother of three. The BBC piece appeared in March 2019, months before Omar's staff requested an official change to her birth year. #Minnesota The BBC article praised her for being born in Africa and for being M*slim, then in the biographical section it read “Ms. Omar was born the youngest of seven siblings in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu in 1981." "Her mother died when she was two years old. Raised by her father and grandfather, the family fled the country during the Somali Civil War and spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before moving to the US in 1995.” ➡️The same article referred to her as “the 37-year-old mother of three.” That age calculation in early 2019 matches a 1981 birth year and does not match a 1982 birth year. ➡️At the time the BBC article ran, Minnesota Legislative Reference Library records listed her date of birth as October 4, 1981. ➡️Those records had carried the 1981 year throughout her service in the Minnesota House (2017–2019) and into the early months of her congressional term. ➡️An archived April 2019 page of the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress also listed her as born October 4, 1981, in Mogadishu. ➡️On May 17, 2019, Omar’s congressional staff contacted the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library and stated that the birth year was incorrect. They requested the change to 1982. ➡️The change was requested after Omar's opponent highlighted that Omar couldn't have been eligible for derivative citizenship because she was already 18 when her dad allegedly naturalized. The library director summarized the request in a May 24, 2019, email: “On May 17, 2019, Library staff were informed by Rep. Omar’s congressional staff that her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982.” The same email noted that staff were working to update Wikipedia and the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. The library’s current profile lists October 4, 1982, and includes this note: “Her birth year is correct. It is incorrectly reported as 1981 in other sources." "As of May 24, 2019, Rep. Omar’s congressional staff are working with Wikipedia and the U.S. House to correct her birth year in those sources.” Deputy director David Schmidtke later confirmed to Snopes that the information was self-reported and that the library does not independently verify birthdates. Under the law then in effect, derivative citizenship required the child to be an unmarried permanent resident under 18. A 1981 birth year would have made her 18 or 19 during 2000, depending on the exact month of her father’s naturalization. A 1982 birth year would have kept her under 18 for most of that year. What do you think? Is this enough to denaturalize and deport?