Can I stir the pot and ask a question which may seem odd?
How exactly do we define citizenship? The vast majority of Americans do not have a passport. So for most, the evidence of citizenship would be a birth certificate.
Naturalized citizens have documentation of their naturalization. But most of us don’t have any documentation of being American except the birth certificate.
And for passport holders, in my case I recall the key document to get a passport was the birth certificate.
> “And for passport holders, in my case I recall the key document to get a passport was the birth certificate.”
I got my passport recently and they required an original, certified birth certificate. No copies allowed. It was the only one I had. They returned it after 6 months.