Speaking as someone who has tried to draft military regulations on a subject, the goal is often to provide ‘one stop shopping’. I wouldn’t hesitate to list terms with identical meanings, because those terms exist somewhere and I want anyone looking for the regulation to see it applies.
I assume the INS would do the same thing.
In any case, an INS instruction is NOT a legal analysis. If you go to court and use this argument, you will be laughed at. And if that is the best you’ve got, you’ll be tossed out of court. In matters of constitutional law, an INS guidebook written by an anonymous author is NOT authoritative. US Supreme Court rulings ARE. If there is any conflict, guess who prevails?
In Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163 (1964), for example, the court wrote:
“”We start from the premise that the rights of citizenship of the native born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity, and are coextensive. The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the “natural born” citizen is eligible to be President. Art. II, § 1.”
Notice the mixing of native born and natural born. Both terms were in use, but the Supreme Court used them interchangeably.
Mr. Rogers quoted: “”We start from the premise that the rights of citizenship of the native born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity, and are coextensive. The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the “natural born” citizen is eligible to be President. Art. II, § 1.”
I don’t think this text is definitively defining natural born = native born. I think there is room in that sentence to presume that native born is a superset of the natural born. Certainly the text implies that naturalized persons cannot be president (natural born). But I don’t think it imposes the constraint that ALL native born citizens are natural born.
But there arises an interesting question. Is there a difference between native born person and a native born citizen. In other words, just because a baby is born on US soil does not necessarily make them US Citizens. Perhaps there is a certian presumption in calling someone a native-born citizen that assumes at least one of their parents are US citizens?
This only shows that natural-born is a subset of native-born. Way to argue against yourself yet again.