I admire a good imagination as much as anyone, but there is NOTHING in that passage that says the 14th amendment creates natural-born citizens. That term is not even contained within the passage. The phrase that Justice Gray uses is "citizenship by birth." This is a separate phrase. He uses it several times in the decision but completely separate from natural-born citizen. Further, he specifically says that the 14th amendment does NOT define natural-born citizen while he says that the 14th amendment DOES define "citizenship by birth." These are two different things. NBC requires citizen parents and citizenship by birth requires parents who are resident aliens, which he specifies: "all children here born of resident aliens."
It's the citation to Lord Coke and the Calvin's Case that is the key. The allegiance owed by an alien to the US is as Lord Coke said in the Calvin's Case, "strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject"". He is using Lord Coke's words to show what applies in the US. The child born in the US to alien parents is natural born. And he repeats the Binney quote as being proof of his assertion.
Yeah, not so much. Calvin's case establishes a fundamental rule that requires parents and the child to have perpetual allegiance and direct obedience to the crown. There's is no parallel for this in U.S. law. The closest we come is through the subject clause, which Gray cites as the parents having permanent residence and domicil. That's not the same at all. Second, the Binney quote shows how weak this citation is. Read it closely:
as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen
"As much a citizen" does not mean "equal to" a natural-born citizen. An apple is as much a piece of fruit as an orange, but an apple is still not an orange. While someone like Obama MIGHT be a citizen (if he could legally prove he was born in the U.S.) he is still not a natural-born citizen unless he was born in the country to parents who were its citizens. If this were "key" to defining 14th amendment citizenship for Wong Kim Ark, the decision could have stopped here, but it doesn't. Instead it goes on for almost 40 pages trying to build a stronger justification for making Ark a citizen. This is because Gray had to try to trump his own legal precedent in Elk v. Wilkins as well as try to get around Slaughterhouse and Minor. He did so by creating a second and SEPARATE class of citizenship through the 14th amendment that is NOT the same thing as natural-born citizenship.
Exactly!
Twice now the voters and the electors found Obama to be qualified. As it is their job under the Constitution to select our presidents, it is their job to either determine whether candidates are in compliance with constitutional qualifications. In both of the last two elections, the "birther" issues were widely debated and a decision was made.
So, either the voters and the electors rejected your definition of the term "natural born citizen" or the they determined that Obama's father was someone who was an American citizen. I think the former more likely than the latter.
If Mr. Cruz runs, the voters and their electors will consider his qualifications to be president. If you feel he fails to meet the constitutional qualifications, then let the voters know about your feelings before they perform their duty.
In approximately 57 straight presidential elections, the voters and the electors have performed their constitutional function without any extra-constitutional interference by any Supreme Court attempts to reject a candidate's qualifications. The voters and their electors will continue to decide these questions and select our presidents per the Constitution.