So on July 9, 1868, a bunch of people who were not citizens, suddenly became "natural born citizens"? How could they be "natural born citizens" if they weren't even citizens when they were born?
(Most) American Indians didn’t become citizens till 1924, after which they were natural born citizens. Though admittedly the status of those born before this was questionable in this regard.
Questionable? How could it be questionable? They were BORN HERE. Isn't that All that is required? I've heard this at least a hundred times, so why are you now trying to weasel out on it?
Here is what the US Supreme Court has ruled concerning your discussion:
“The real object of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in qualifying the words, “All persons born in the United States” by the addition “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” would appear to have been to exclude, by the fewest and fittest words (besides children of members of the Indian tribes, standing in a peculiar relation to the National Government, unknown to the common law), the two classes of cases — children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign State — both of which, as has already been shown, by the law of England and by our own law from the time of the first settlement of the English colonies in America, had been recognized exceptions to the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the country. Calvin’s Case, 7 Rep. 1, 18b; Cockburn on Nationality, 7; Dicey Conflict of Laws, 177; Inglis v. Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 3 Pet. 99, 155; 2 Kent Com. 39, 42.”
In the full decision, they also discuss the case of blacks. Slaves were considered property, and as long as they were property, they could not be citizens. Once they ceased to be slaves, they became citizens, and the 14th Amendment overturned the ridiculous Dred Scott decision. And Indians were considered nations embedded within the borders of the USA.
But Obama isn’t a Sioux, and he wasn’t born to a slave, was he...
In the early part of this country’s history, Indians were considered members of their own nation, not Americans. That’s why Indian treaties were viewed as engagements with another nation. (Not that we usually paid much attention to the treaties for long.)
Various Indians became American citizens as a result of these various treaties, because they were born off the reservations, or for other reasons. By 1924 about 2/3 were citizens, and the law of that year made the remainder citizens.
On second thought, I agree with you. An amendment or law recognizing new groups as citizens could not retroactively add natural-born status to them. So I guess they came in as a variant of naturalized citizen.
Although if the Dred Scott decision could decide, in defiance of history and logic, that African-Americans were not and never could be citizens, then it would be no less illogical to have a ruling that they always had been citizens and if born here NBC. Their citizen and NBC status had just been illegally denied for a long time.