BOSTON (AFP) - A 69-year-old uncle of President Barack Obama has been granted the right to remain in the United States permanently after a federal court ruling, his lawyer revealed.

Kenya-born Onyango Obama arrived in the United States in October 1963 on a student visa and has lived in the Boston region ever since, attorney Margaret Wong said in a statement on Tuesday.

At a hearing before immigration judge Leonard Shapiro, Obama testified that his nephew was the US President.

"I do have a nephew," he was quoted as saying by The Boston Globe.

"He's the president of the United States."

According to his attorney, Barack Obama's late father brought his brother to the United States in the 1960s in order to send him to a private school.

The Kenyan national was "extremely grateful for the privilege of receiving his green card after more than 50 years in the United States," attorney Wong added.

According to the Boston Globe, Mr Onyango Obama also contradicted the US president's claim that he had never met his uncle.

He said his famous nephew had stayed with him for three weeks in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the late 1980s when he was a student at Harvard Law School.