From the government’s brief in U.S. v.Wong Kim Ark (1898):
“The district court, following as being stare decisis the ruling of Mr. Justice Field in the case of Look Tin Sing (10 Sawyer, 356), sustained the claim of the respondent, held him to be a citizen by birth, and permitted him to land. The question presented by this appeal may be thus stated: Is a person born within The United States of alien parents domiciled therein a citizen thereof by the fact of his birth? The appellant maintains the negative, and in that behalf assigns as error the ruling of the district court that the respondent is a natural-born citizen, and on that ground holding him exempt from the provisions of the Chinese exclusion act and permitting him to land.”
Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act which was in force in 1898, Wong Kim Ark could not be naturalized as a U.S.citizen.
The Supreme Court clearly established that there are two classes of citizens ONLY since the adoption of the 14th Amendment.
Elk v Wilkins, 112 U. S. 94 (1884): “The distinction between citizenship by birth and citizenship by naturalization is clearly marked in the provisions of the constitution, by which ‘no person, except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall be eligible to the office of president;’ and ‘the congress shall have power to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.’Const. art. 2, § 1; art. 1, § 8.”
Note that “citizens by birth” are contrasted to naturalized citizens, with the former exclusively being eligible to be president.
The Court went on to rule in Elk v. Wilkens:
“This section [of the 14th Amendment] contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization. The persons declared to be citizens are ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
At any point in time Congress could pass a bill and a president could sign into law an act differentiating between a citizen of the United States at birth and an Article 2 natural born citizen. But that has never happened and thus the Supreme Court has not had the opportunity to rule directly on the constitutional issue.
Another option would be for a state legislature to pass legislation requiring two American citizen parents in order to be eligible to run for President/Vice President on a state’s ballot. That state law would be fast tracked to a Supreme Court ruling.