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If we agree that illegal aliens cannot confer citizenship on children born here, then we have a case where it's not enough to just be born here for someone to be a natural born citizen.

For legal alien status that confers citizenship to children, is it only permanent resident alien status or does even temporary student visas count?

I would think (hope?) that someone with a delcared temporary status cannot confer citizenship on their children, whereas someone with a declared permanent resident status could.

I read on old naturalization histories that it was required of an alien to declare their intention to become a citizen to begin the naturalization process. It would be reasonable to assume that someone here on a temporary student visa has declared their intention to not stay here, and so should not be able to confer natural born status to their children?

-PJ

I read on old naturalization histories that it was required of an alien to declare their intention to become a citizen to begin the naturalization process.

I've read the same. Wish I had bookmarked it at the time.

Immigrants weren't 'immigrant's' until they registered to begin the naturalization process.

Everyone else was considered a denizen .

Denizens were under the jurisdiction of the States. It's HOW they kept what we now call 'illegals' out of the country.

From the 1st legal treaties written after Constitutional Ratification:

The common law has affixed such distinct and appropriate ideas to the terms denization, and naturalization, that they can not be confounded together, or mistaken for each other in any legal transaction whatever. They are so absolutely distinct in their natures, that in England the rights they convey, can not both be given by the same power; the king can make denizens, by his grant, or letters patent, but nothing but an act of parliament can make a naturalized subject. This was the legal state of this subject in Virginia, when the federal constitution was adopted; it declares that congress shall have power to establish an uniform rule of naturalization; throughout the United States; but it also further declares, that the powers not delegated by the constitution to the U. States, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states, respectively or to the people. The power of naturalization, and not that of denization, being delegated to congress, and the power of denization not being prohibited to the states by the constitution, that power ought not to be considered as given to congress, but, on the contrary, as being reserved to the states.
St. George Tucker

The States had the FULL Constitutional authority to eject foreigners and aliens from their State and/or make restrictions on their residence until the federal government decided it could hopscotch past the 'parties to the compact' and make the 14th Amendment into some kind of grant of national jurisdiction.