I was just made privy to a very important piece of research I had not previously been aware of. It comes by way of a comment forwarded to me by the author of the h2ooflife blog:
“I had presumed that the idiom “natural born citizen” appeared nowhere in U.S. Law other than A2S1C5, but I found it in administrative law and it is contrasted with native and naturalized citizenship. I’ve never seen any mention of this fact before and wonder how many are aware of it in the ineligibility camp. Here’s the quotes:
http://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/SLB/HTML/SLB/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-45104/0-0-0-48602.html
He then quoted two provisions from the link provided, but there’s actually three at the official INS “.gov” site which establish official recognition by the federal government that native-born and natural-born should be separately delineated. When you visit the suggested link to the Immigration and Naturalization service, it brings you to “Interpretation 324.2 Reacquisition of citizenship lost by marriage.”
Interpretation 324.2 (a)(3) provides:
“The repatriation provisions of these two most recent enactments also apply to a native- and natural-born citizen woman who expatriated herself by marriage to an alien…” (Emphasis added.)
Then, Interpretation 324.2(a)(7) provides:
“(7) Restoration of citizenship is prospective . Restoration to citizenship under any one of the three statutes is not regarded as having erased the period of alienage that immediately preceded it.
The words “shall be deemed to be a citizen of the United States to the same extent as though her marriage to said alien had taken place on or after September 22, 1922″, as they appeared in the 1936 and 1940 statutes, are prospective and restore the status of native-born or natural-born citizen (whichever existed prior to the loss) as of the date citizenship was reacquired.” (Emphasis added.)
And again, Interpretation 324.2(b) provides:
“The effect of naturalization under the above statutes was not to erase the previous period of alienage, but to restore the person to the status if naturalized, native, or natural-born citizen, as determined by her status prior to loss.” (Emphasis added.)
I just clicked on the links you posted to the ins.gov web-site. One link has been taken down. None of the others contain the term “natural born.”. If these are changes that occurred on a government website in the last several hours, we should all be quite disturbed. I have never been a conspiracy theorist, but a chill is running up my spine.