Precisely.
Imagine this scenario:
Along the US-Mexico border, in a location where hundreds even thousands of people per day cross back and forth to do business, visit friends and relatives, attend social engagements etc, along comes a pregnant woman who crosses from the US into Mexico that day and intends to come right back across into the US after a few hours. She is fully an AMERICAN citizen, by birth. But while on the Mexican side she goes into labor and gives birth before getting back to America.
After she gets back home with her baby, does the baby have to later become naturalized because he was born the day his mom visited across the border?
IOW, is the baby a foreigner? Until naturalized later? Or is the baby a citizen, but unqualified to run for President because his mom went into labor and gave birth while on Mexican soil?
Or, as my POV contends, is that baby a natural born citizen of the United States?
Under American law, not old European law, what is he?
Red Steel? What is that baby, born to an American citizen mother, who was not on American soil when the baby decided to be born??
If we agree that he is American and not Mexican, why is that?
And if those who take the view that under American law, natural born is the opposite of naturalized (and I will let THEM debate my side - they’re more qualified) are correct about that, then later the baby CAN run for President.
The fact that some can say s/he is American and some can also say s/he is Mexican cannot be said of a "Natural Born Citizen" of whatever nation you apply the NBC definition to.
Blood and soil, not one or the other, and in the olden days before one parent households became our norm, "blood" would have meant dear ol' dad.
It is what it is and it has always been so.
Just as a apple tree produces only apples, an American mother produces only Americans. You can plant an apple tree (an American mother) in the the middle of an orange grove (foreign soil), but it will continue to produce only apples, never an orange.
Ted Cruz - 2016
(A Natural Born American, by birth and at birth)