Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

There is ample proof that one need not be a native speaker of English to excel in it.... In recent years, of course, there's the English-language prose stylist V.S. Naipaul (A House for Mr. Biswas, Half a Life), a writer of Hindu ancestry from the Creole-speaking country of Trinidad who was to win the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature. Their key to success was mastering English, assiduously applying it to the writing craft despite the limitations of not having been born to it.

--Jose A. Carillo, writing, of all places, in the Manila Times (how did we ever do without Google News?).

"Not having been born to it"?