The 14th Amendment defines citizenship this way: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." But even this does not get specific enough. As usual, the Constitution provides the framework for the law, but it is the law that fills in the gaps. The Constitution authorizes the Congress to do create clarifying legislation in Section 5 of the 14th Amendment; the Constitution, in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4, also allows the Congress to create law regarding naturalization, which includes citizenship.
Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in the gaps left by the Constitution. Section 1401 defines the following as people who are "citizens of the United States at birth:"
Anyone born inside the United States *
Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person's status as a citizen of the tribe
Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S.
* There is an exception in the law — the person must be "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. This would exempt the child of a diplomat, for example, from this provision.
Anyone falling into these categories is considered natural-born, and is eligible to run for President or Vice President.
“Anyone falling into these categories is considered natural-born, and is eligible to run for President or Vice President.”
No, it certainly does not. All natural born citizens of the United States are U.S. citizens, but not all U.S. citizens are natural born citizens. You keep confusing the two as being the same, when they are not and never can be the same or interchangeable due to the meaning of the words, particularly the word, natural.
A person who obtains U.S. citizenship by application to the U.S. Department of States requesting recognition of the election to accept U.S. citizenship at birth does so by the authority of the statutory laws in the U.S. Code, and the U.S. Code is manmade law and artificial law. It is not what is known as natural law. Because this U.S. citizenship is obtained retroactively to the date and time of birth by the operation of artificial law, it can also be revoked by artificial law, and it has been revoked in some past cases due to conflicting claims of citizenship and allegiance. Foreign born U.S. citizens are treated the same as if they were actual natural born citizens in most respects, but not with respect to the authority for their citizenship, the liability to revocation of the citizenship by artificial law, their potential for conflict of allegiance when a foreign sovereign can claim jurisdiction over the person, and the fact of not being an actual natural born citizen with two U.S. citizen parents and birth in the United States.
By contrast, an actual natural born citizen has no possibility of being born with a foreign citizenship, because the parents are both U.S. citizens (jus sanguinis) and the birth takes place in the United States (jus soli). Such a person’s U.S. citizenship at birth is described as natural born citizenship because no manmade or artificial statutory law is required to confer U.S. citizenship on the person. The person is a natural born citizen because the law of nature instead of the law of man has determined the person is a citizen in the sovereign jurisdiction of the United States. While a foreign born U.S. citizen can have that U.S. citizenship at birth revoked by artificial statutory law, the natural birth of a U.S. citizen with U.S. citizen parents in the United States cannot have that U.S. citizenship at birth become revoked by artificial statutory law. Any attempt to do so creates a stateless person, and domestic and international law does not recognize the revocation of a natural born citizenship at birth.
These principals of law and citizenship have been in use and are based upon the works of American, English, French, Dutch, German, Swiss, and other jurists going back to the 18th to 14th Centuries in the near term, and their antecedents go back to the ancient civilizations of Rome, Greece, and earlier. The distinctions between being an actual natural born citizen and being treated in some and not all respects as a natural born citizen were the subject of the judiciary in the 17th Century discussing laws and cases back to the Norman conquest and the questions of citizenship it caused.