Anwar al-Awlaki
Early life
Al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico in the United States in 1971 to parents from Yemen, while his father was doing graduate work at U.S. universities. His father, Nasser al-Awlaki, was a Fulbright Scholar
In 1978, when al-Awlaki was seven years old, he returned with his family to Yemen.[18][51] He lived in Yemen for 11 years, where he studied at Azal Modern School.
In 1991, al-Awlaki returned to the U.S. state of Colorado to attend college. He earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University (1994), where he was president of the Muslim Student Association.[52] He attended the university on a foreign student visa and a government scholarship from Yemen, claiming to be born in that country,
He spent a summer of his college years training with the Afghan mujahideen.
Soon after his return to the U.S. in 1990 to attend college, al-Awlaki applied for a Social Security number, falsely giving his birthplace as Yemen rather than the U.S.
Al-Awlaki had listed Yemen rather than the United States as his place of birth on his 1990 application for a U.S. Social Security number, soon after arriving in the US. "The bizarre thing is if you put Yemen down (on the application), it would be harder to get a Social Security number than to say you are a native-born citizen of Las Cruces", Gaouette said.[2]
Al-Awlaki used this documentation to obtain a passport in 1993. He later corrected his place of birth to Las Cruces, New Mexico.
The New York Times suggested later that al-Awlaki had claimed birth in Yemen (his family's place of origin) to qualify for scholarship money granted to foreign citizens