A serious inquiry does not end with the correct statutory language. One looks to how the courts view the acquisition of citizenship by statute.
As you well know, and choose to ignore, the controlling court cases find all persons born abroad to be presumed alien at birth. If the circumstances of birth, of a person born abroad, comport with language in an Act of Congress, that person is considered a naturalized citizen.
Under controlling legal precedent, Ted Cruz is a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Actually, I didn't know that, although barring any other consideration, I suppose it could be assumed, barring what is otherwise well enough known as exceptions to application of the word "all". Such as; at least one parent being a citizen of the United States, at time of the child under consideration's own birth.
Really? Where we can find that so neatly cut and dried as it was just expressed from under your own pen?
The problem I've having with it, is that I'm finding it impossible to consider, much less believe that a person who is born as a citizen is not for all other intents and purposes to be considered a natural born citizen.
That's sounds like twisting things around just a little, while all but denying that he was born a citizen, naturally so under the conditions of his birth, as those conditions were recognized to convey citizenship at the time of his birth.
One cannot be born a citizen, and then need to otherwise go through further process to become a citizen (or else be made a citizen at some later time, according to statues adopted after time of one's birth) if one was born a citizen in the first place, as far as I can tell.
You speak of controlling legal precedent.
The only things I've seen so far don't quite cut it, as far as denying that the man was born as a citizen of the United States, albeit born on foreign soil.
There is precedent in the cases of George Romney (Mitt Romney's father, who was born in Mexico) and John McCain, born in what was the then entitled Panama "Canal Zone", having had the conditions of their own births examined, and found to fit the qualification to be able to run for office of president.
Romney's went to court (didn't it? I'm no expert), McCain's birth was challenged in the Senate (if memory here serves). Did the Senate make John McCain a natural born citizen, or was McCain born a citizen at birth (naturally, under considerations of the law at the time of his birth) and that was merely determined to be the case when the details of his birth (and the laws) were examined in a Senate hearing?
You do know of those cases? Or are you the one who is "choosing to ignore" those precedents, while otherwise appearing to me to be bluffing that there is "controlling legal precedent" which would absolutely make Cruz into be "naturalized by statute", rather than natural born citizen by birth under conditions which also happen to be delineated under statutory laws, sufficiently extant at time of his birth.
That's the greater part of what "natural born" means, isn't it? Naturally a citizen at birth, under laws in effect at the time of one's birth. What other definition is there?
Those same statutes hold other delineations of who is to be considered born a citizen of the United States without making distinction between "born as citizen" and quote-unquote "natural born citizen".
I myself, was born of parents who themselves were born as citizens (going back to the mid-1700's even). Since I am among those who's conditions of birth are also listed in the same statutes which stipulate who is to be considered born a citizen, by your reasoning, apparently it could be argued that I would not qualify to run for that office (under the Constitution, and the further effectual laws which delve into the meaning of what it is to be born a citizen) since I too am among those who's conditions of birth are delineated in the same statues upon which Senator's Cruz's status as "born a citizen of the United States" needfully rely.