This is not change. It was this way from the beginning.
Congress declared that “the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens.” 1 Stat. 104 (1790).
http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/2/essays/82/presidential-eligibility
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=227
No you misunderstand my original point. The child of American citizen(s) born anywhere is a natural born American citizen at birth. On that point we are in agreement.
My point was that natural born necessitated having allegiance to the country at birth. Children born to citizens of other countries are citizens of their fathers/parents country at birth no matter where they are born. It has been reasoned that while they are American citizens at birth since they are born here because there is the possibility of divided loyalties they are not natural born citizens. They are after all of dual citizenship at birth and are being raised by parent presumably loyal to another country, since the parents are not American citizens. This distinction does not appear to have held up over the years but it was that point that I was originally making.
SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, that the children of persons duly naturalized, dwelling within the United States, and being under the age of twenty-one years, at the time of such naturalization, and the children of citizens of the United States, born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons, whose fathers have never been resident of the United States: Provided also, That no person heretofore proscribed by any state, or who has been legally convicted of having joined the army of Great Britain during the late war, shall be admitted a citizen as foresaid, without the consent of the legislature of the state, in which such person was proscribed.Seems like personal agendas get in the way of defining natural born citizenship just like they do defining marriage nowadays or defining global warming or climate change or anything else you can think of.
Perhaps our current troubles with absolutes and rigid definitions demonstrates one of the reasons why John Adams wrote to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massacusetts on October 11, 1798 that:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."We are not that people at the moment, but we could be again.
We went from the 1890 "Gay 90s" to the fundamentally redefined very gay 1990s.
Sooner or later the pendulum will swing back again.