Birthers will be birthers.

President Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate last week, April 27, in an attempt to finally silence the overly vocal birther movement. It did no such thing.

It is a sad day for America when our nation’s president feels compelled to prove his eligibility as president. It is a sad day for America when the media, the public and the president himself feel the need to make a field day of this inane accusation in the midst of our country’s most pressing issues, such as America’s job security or role in foreign affairs. It is a sad day for this country when no other president had been questioned of his being a natural-born citizen — except our first black president.

We have no answer as to when or how this resurgence of birtherism caught on. Prior to Obama, presidential candidates were never asked to prove they were born on American soil — not even when it was released that 2008 candidate John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone.

Since the release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate, its “questionable” validity has only ignited more heated debate over the legitimacy of his American identity. And though we understand the petulance of birthers, such as the Donald, who have garnered an incomprehensible amount of the media attention, we ask: If Obama was going to release the long-form certificate, why didn’t he choose to release it earlier?

When his “certificate of live birth,” a short-form version available to all Hawaiian citizens, was released in 2008, the conspiracy theories and “He-ain’t-an-American” yakking did not subside. None of us expected the long-form certificate to do much more. Those who are adamant to believe the president is not a natural-born citizen will only continue to do so, and for Obama to deliver a response to their insinuations is a waste of his time better spent elsewhere.