Flexible biography
As far as wanting to be seen to be born in the USA, I guess that was fairly recent development. Obama spent part of his literary career pretending he had been born in Kenya instead of his actual birthplace in Hawaii, apparently for the exotic effect it would have on his book sales.
There was a lot of hysteria about that on the board about a year ago, with the usual ink-squirters stubbornly ignoring the multiple reasons this could not have been the "random accidental typo" it was claimed to be. As I recall, there were ducks a-plenty by the ends of those threads. :)