I agree.
But this doesn't make it true.
“True” in this case, of political practice, is not and cannot be a philosophical ideal, according to the line of development of the national ideology of the United States, which comes via Aristotle and Locke, etc.
If we set up a conflict between the rational-empirical and the ideal, we come back to Aristotle vs Plato.
The “natural born” position is very much a Platonic one, of imagining an ideal form.