Anwar al-Awlaki was born in 1971 to Yemeni citizens in Las Cruces, New Mexico. US Intelligence reports that, from the age of seven, al-Awlaki was raised abroad, becoming an enemy of America, indoctrinated by the highest powers of Al-Qaida and studying under the same teachers as Osama bin Laden. He eventually influenced various terrorists such as the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, and helped plan the thwarted attack of the “Underwear Bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Al-Awlaki’s phone number was found among the contact information of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the man known as “the 20th hijacker” in the 9/11 attacks.
Those who suggest that there is no distinction between “citizen” and “Natural Born Citizen” would have us believe and accept that such a person might have been eligible to run for President of the US simply because he was born in America. According to defenders of the alleged eligibility of Barack Obama (or Marco Rubio, or Bobby Jindal), any person born on US soil to one or more alien citizens could be the leader of the free world. At some point, according to that path of logic, this should have included Anwar al-Awlaki.
So, to say that every person born a US citizen is also a natural born citizen is also to say that any foreign interest whose child was born in the US could be allowed to raise that child abroad as an enemy of the US and return that child to this country in time to meet the Constitution’s 14-year residency requirement for President.
Citizen or naturalized citizen. That’s it.
There is a real life example which is better than a hypothetical.
In 2004, Róger Calero, who was born in Nicaragua and is a naturalized U.S. citizen was the Socialist Worker Party candidate for President of the United States and received 3,689 votes.
Because he is not a natural born citizen of the United States, Calero is ineligible to become U.S. president under the United States Constitution, meaning that even had he won the election, he would not have been permitted to serve.
James Harris, the Socialist Workers’ Party presidential candidate from 2000, stood in on the ticket in nine states where Calero could not be listed on the ballot and Harris received 7,102 votes.
Róger Calero again ran for President in the 2008 presidential election and again, James Harris stood in for Calero in several states where not being a natural born citizen prevented him from even being listed on the ballot. In the 2008 presidential election, Calero was allowed on the ballot in five states, where he received 7,209 votes and James Harris received 2,424 votes in five states where he was on the ballot in place of Calero.
Since the courts have ruled that Barack Obama is a natural born citizen, the point is moot as to whether there is a difference between a “citizen” and a “natural born citizen.”
The courts have consistently ruled since the 19th century that anyone who qualifies as a “Citizen of the United States At Birth” is also a “natural born citizen.”