Especially since 8 US Code 1401 also provides for the following, along with other sets of qualifying conditions for "citizen at birth":
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof;
Unless someone wants to argue that we area ALL naturalized citizens, he would be forced to argue that there are distinctions among the quality of citizenship granted by the statute, not merely among the qualification conditions for citizenship, that are simply not present in the statute.
I think either argument would lose if tested in a courtroom.
It's not clear what you're trying to say here. The relevant distinction is made between birth within the United States and birth outside of it:
"Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization. A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of the annexation of foreign territory, or by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts." U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 702, 703 (1898).
8 U.S.C. s.1401(a) pertains to citizens born within the jurisdiction of the U.S. It's obviously just a restatement of the birth provision of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, which principle is also set forth in the first sentence of the above quotation. Those persons are considered natural born citizens.
Other provisions of that section (subsections c, d, e, g, and h) pertain to various other classes of persons not born in the U.S. Those persons would be considered naturalized citizens.
So no one would argue that everyone described in section 1401 is a naturalized citizen. You're erecting a nice strawman argument.
I think either argument would lose if tested in a courtroom.
That everyone described in section 1401 is a naturalized citizen is an argument no sane person would make.
I'm not sure what other argument you have in mind here. Though it seems you're still trying to look at the statutes to answer the Constitutional question.