I believe the holding was that he was a "citizen." The words "natural born" do not seem to be written in their holding. I have pointed out that in those days ink was cheap, and if they omitted the words "natural born" then it was their intention to do so.
The plaintiffs asked the Justices to decide: “Are Chinese children born in this country to share with the descendants of the patriots of the American Revolution the exalted qualification of being eligible to the Presidency of the nation, conferred by the Constitution in recognition of the importance and dignity of citizenship by birth?”
Yes, yes, all of that may very well be true, but is seemingly irrelevant to the point.
Wong Kim Ark says that anyone born outside the geographical jurisdiction of the United States can only be a naturalized citizen.
It would seem that Wong Kim Ark, a case you and others have cited so many times as the "authority" on this sort of issue, does not favor the case of anyone born outside of the United States.
Wong Kim Ark could not have been naturalized due to the Chinese Exclusion Acts whch barred him from naturalization.
The decision of the Court stated: [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, ’strong enough to make a natural subject, for, if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject’
“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.’
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.”