[alexander_busek]

I think the difficulty with your formulation is that you’ve now placed a constitutional requirement in the hands of a bureaucrat. What’s to say that some bureaucrat somewhere doesn’t start granting citizenship to children of Saudi princes wherever they might be born, and they then buy their way into the Presidency?

A very unlikely scenario!

But I'll give you a much more-likely one: Some 5-rate dictatorship somewhere in the world passes legislation (or, more likely: issues a decree) that the grandchildren or even great-great-grandchildren of its subjects are its own NBCs regardless of place of birth.

RESULT: Some 4th-generation American, born and bred in (say) Oklahoma, announces his candidacy for President, and then the Supreme Court or Grand Vizir of, say, the Republic of Abkhasia or Transnistria declares: That Oklahoman is also a subject of our country! He's a dual national! Thus making him ineligible (by your definition) to become President of the U.S.

Regards,

[Behind the Blue Wall]

That’s why the rule can’t be no dual nationals, but instead simply the strictest formulation that would most preclude the possibility of dual nationals.

[visually_augmented]

AB: “But I’ll give you a much more-likely one: Some 5-rate dictatorship somewhere in the world passes legislation (or, more likely: issues a decree) that the grandchildren or even great-great-grandchildren of its subjects are its own NBCs regardless of place of birth.”

Your supposition above make no difference since it was legislation of another country. US Law does not honor the laws of other countries over our citizens. That is the very basis of citizenship. But US law does acknowledge that within our borders there are aliens. Our laws do acknowledge that these non-citizens are subject to the laws of their own heritage. Until they are full US citizens, these people are still under the authority of their “fatherland”.

But as Blue Wall suggests (and I concur) is that Congress has authority to define citizenship (without amendment) as it pertains to those born on foreign soil and/or with dissimilar parentage. But Congress has no authority to change the status of those who are natural born. It seems obvious to me that if Congress could pass laws revoking the citizenship of an individual, it must mean that same individual does not have the Constitutional protection of a NBC.