EXCEPT by the Supreme Court itself that cited Minor in strict reference to presidential eligibility, but NOT Wong Kim Ark. The number of times Wong Kim Ark is cited by courts doesn't trump the Supreme Court's unanimous and direct reference to presidential eligibility.
Under our Constitution, a naturalized citizen stands on an equal footing with the native citizen in all respects save that of eligibility to the Presidency. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 88 U. S. 165; Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U. S. 94, 112 U. S. 101; Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 22 U. S. 827.
This is fatal to any notion that Wong Kim Ark is the controlling decision since Ark makes the same distinction that is mentioned in this sentence. The reason is because Wong Kim Ark answered the question you quoted from the government by deferring to the Minor decision on its definition of natural-born citizen.
In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens."
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all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is manifest from a unanimous judgment of the Court ...
At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children, born in a country of [p680] parents who were its citizens, became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.
IOW, the Wong Kim Ark decision categorically excluded any and all persons from being natural-born citizens if not born in the country to citizen parents. Those who rely on the 14th amendment for citizenship had to satisfy the subject clause by being born to parents with permanent residence and domicil. Cruz doesn't meet these conditions nor does Obama.
Edge919 says: “IOW, the Wong Kim Ark decision categorically excluded any and all persons from being natural-born citizens if not born in the country to citizen parents. Those who rely on the 14th amendment for citizenship had to satisfy the subject clause by being born to parents with permanent residence and domicil. Cruz doesn’t meet these conditions nor does Obama.”
As to Senator Cruz, my guess is that the statute (8 U.S.C. § 1401) that defines one category of citizen of the United States at birth as: “a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years...” will carry him to confirmation of natural born citizen status should his eligibility ever be tested in court.
From the Wong majority decision:
[An alien parent’s] allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case, 7 Coke, 6a, ’strong enough to make a natural subject, for, if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject’
The Wong court also held that: “Subject’ and ‘citizen’ are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives; and though the term ‘citizen’ seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, ’subjects,’ for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.’ and the Court went on to rule: “…every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
“ The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.”
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)
And in contemporary times, 16 courts have ruled that Barack Obama is eligible as a natural born citizen and no court has ever ruled to the contrary. For example:
Tisdale v Obama, US District Court Judge John A. Gibney, Jr.: “It is well settled that those born within the United States are natural born citizens.”— Tisdale v Obama, US District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, January 23, 2012.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/82011399/Tisdale-v-Obama-EDVA-3-12-cv-00036-Doc-2-ORDER-23-Jan-2012