RobbyS, how a term recited in over forty Supreme Court Cases, and used as precedent in Minor v. Happersett can be called ambiguous raises the question, “what does ambiguous mean?”
There was never any other definition. Only recently have individuals found the long accepted definition inconvenient. When the author of the naturalization amendment, the 14th, confirmed the Vattel definition, and the most important test case, Wong Kim Ark repeated the Vattel/Minor definition to make Wong Kim, like Obama, a naturalized citizen, naturalized at birth, but naturalized, how can there be ambiguity?
I say it is ambiguous because it was employed at first to fit a particular political situation and, I may add, as part of designing a wholly new office office to fit a particular man, Washington. Like much of the Constitution, it was intended as a negative. The United States would NOT be a monarchy but a republic, Congress would NOT be a Parliament, and the Senate and House would NOT be another House of Lord and Commons. There would be NO national Church. The head of state would NOT be a sacred figure and also head of a royal dynasty. This fit Washington like a glove, and no European prince at all. To fasten on “Natural” is a bit like fastening on 35, which had a basis is numerology AND, actually meant maturity in an age when men were old physically at fifty, even though many of them at age sixty were physically tougher than a man like GEORGE Romney.
Now that said, I take your point about worrying about foreign born Americans in an age when so many millions of Americans are born abroad. But having lived a Little America in germany for many, many years, and having associated with so many American military persons, I must say that there is no group more intensely patriotic, more republican than they. For them it is bone deep. I worry more about someone like our President with his detached, cosmopolitan attitude and his shallow connection. His is the attitude of an immigrant without the gratitude. Furthermore, it is attitude of our supposed “Meritocracy,” with whom he shared his school experience, so often scions of wealthy fathers —like another president I could name—who could NOT have made it on their own except through connections.