“is as much of a citizen as the latter, which means to me he has the exact same status as a child born of citizens”
He may be “as much a citizen”, but he is not “as much a natural born citizen”
“He may be ‘as much a citizen’, but he is not ‘as much a natural born citizen’”
To be as much of a citizen as a natural born citizen is to be as much a natural born citizen as a natural born citizen to my ears. Where do you find a distinction?
"which means to me"
I am seeing people making interpretations of what they want "natural-born citizen" to mean rather than going back to original intent and source documents (e.g. Vattel).
I think defining NBC is an emotional issue for some, because it is "anti-egalitarian." Stick to the firm definition of NBC, and you conclude that no, not everyone can be President. Not even if you born here and were an upstanding citizen. Not even if Mommy and Daddy were good Americans but you were born overseas. Not even if you were naturalized and served in the Armed Services.
Can you imagine a modern American schoolteacher surveying her classroom and telling her pupils, "Not all of you can grow up to be President, you have to have American parents, and be born here in America"? Can you imagine the screams and the tears, the crying about discrimination and unfairness? But we seem to have come to the point where we care more about the feelings of an individual than the welfare of a whole country.
I know I was taught (long ago, ha ha) in school that only a child of American citizen parents, born on American soil, could become President. It was in our class on American history. We were also taught the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Learning about what the Constitutional requirements for President were was a sobering thought but this law is part of our nation's history.
A natural-born citizen, as stipulated in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution, is one who has an ironclad allegiance to his country through birth and parentage. He is in a sort of state of grace; he has not earned his status by law: he is at least one generation removed from statutory citizenship. Loyalty to his home country is an essential, inborn part of who he is.
The people who feel squeamish about the NBC requirement for the Presidency also feel squeamish about the need for national defense. We have firm boundaries about our country's borders and we need to remember we have these boundaries for citizenship too, though some groups have tried hard to blur or weaken them.