Congress has the power to naturalize. The 1790 Act is an instance of their exercise of this power. In that Act Congress conferred upon the foreign born children of U.S. citizens the legal status “natural born citizen”. Those children required a Congressional Act to obtain this status.
February 4, 1790, while discussing a bill to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, the U.S. Representative from South Carolina Aedanus Burke said: “The case of the children of American parents born abroad ought to be provided for”. Burke recognized that those children were not citizens and that the bill should accommodate their situation.
Unlike in 1790, Madison was a member of the committee which drafted the 1795 Act.
December 29, 1794, Madison said that Congress had no naturalization authority over American citizens, “It was only granted to them to admit aliens.” On January 5, 1795 Madison reported the naturalization bill that became the Act of 1795. Unlike the 1790 Act, this Act conferred the legal status “citizen”. Like Burke, Madison viewed the foreign born children of U.S. citizens as requiring naturalization.
A lot of back and forth on the NBC issue, but as far as birth on foreign soil, that is still an open issue. The Act of 1795 replaced the 1790 Act. However, the portion about birth outside the U.S. was not contravened in the new law. Regardless of sentiments of certain members of Congress, the majority chose not to address birth outside the U.S. or contravene the allowance in the previous Act. Thus we were left with at least the possibility that one may be foreign born and an NBC.
At this point in time, either Congress should make a sweeping law about NBC or federal cases should be taken individually. Probably both as no law can cover every nuance and instance. The Obama and Cruz controversies should have been taken up in federal court, which , again , has the power to decide for the parties at hand, but not to create national law.