A popular claim of late is that “natural born citizen” and “citizen of the United States at birth” are synonymous. This is easily refuted.
Naturalization statutes can and do grant citizenship at birth. See, for example, Pub.L. 82–414 § 301(a)(7); 66 Stat. 236. (available at http://constitution.org/uslaw/sal/066_statutes_at_large.pdf ).
There is no question that this statute naturalizes since the citizenship granted is temporary and provisional, for a child who acquires citizenship by § 301(a)(7) to retain citizenship the child must meet the requirements of § 301(b).
A natural born citizen does not need to take affirmative actions to retain citizenship.
This demonstrates that a “citizen of the United States at birth” can be a naturalized citizen, hence “citizen of the United States at birth” and “natural born citizen” are not synonymous.
The Supreme Court in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark is quite clear on this point: statutes “conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens” is naturalization.
Some who the claim that “natural born citizen” and “citizen of the United States at birth” are synonymous then bootstrap that to claim that the 14th Amendment made natural born citizens, even though the term is never used in the Amendment.
Lies upon lies.
Have pointed this out till i'm blue in the face. It simply doesn't register.
They cannot grasp the concept that conditional citizenship isn't natural citizenship.