U.S. President Barack Obama holds Joshua Blanchard
U.S. President Barack Obama holds Joshua Blanchard, whose father Brandon Blanchard is a member of the U. S. Coast Guard, at an Independence Day barbeque for members of the military and their families on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington July 4, 2011. REUTERS

President Barack Obama's birth certificate proves he was born in United States, but he came close to growing up in a foster home.

Documents relating to Obama's father, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that the elder Barack Obama told immigration officials he was planning to put up for adoption the baby that his five-months-pregnant wife, Ann Dunham, was carrying, Boston.com reported Thursday.

[Obama] got his [United States citizen] wife 'Hapai' [Hawaiian for pregnant] 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,'' a memo written by an officer in the Honolulu branch of what was then the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said.

Obama senior, then a student at the University of Hawaii, had run into trouble with immigration officials over suspicion that he had a wife in Kenya, though he insisted that he had divorced her. At the time, Dunham was only 18 years old.

Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Dunham's maternal uncle Charles Payne and several of Dunham's friends all denied that they had ever heard Dunham speak about putting Obama up for adoption or seen evidence that she was pondering it.

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