What "approach" is that, and to what "policy" is it relevant? The only relevance of "natural born citizen" is to the question of who can run for President. And that has absolutely nothing to do with the State Department, period. The State Department never, ever has to make a determination of who can run for President.
The Consulate does indeed need to know the statutes to be able to process the citizenship requests of citizens for their offspring born abroad.
That is absolutely true, but only thing they need for that is to know whether or not someone is a "citizen", not whether they are a "natural born citizen". The far more specific question of whether a citizen "at birth" is actually a "natural born citizen" eligible to run for President has absolutely nothing to do with them performing their duties.
I think you are being disingenuous. CBoldt has captured the essence of the situation above. The State Department manual is very extensive to give the Consulate relevant information. The parents may ask the question, can my child become President? The prior Presidential Qualification section defined what the answer from the Consulate should be to this very natural question. Now only crickets remain.
I find it very strange that your focus is that the State Department doesn’t need to know, they have no business knowing. This is a Nation of Laws not of elites; its OK for us peasants to know the Law unless our betters are getting ready to put one over on us.
My early Civics classes have not yet gone down the memory hole and the Constitution, Founder’s correspondence, and early court cases are clear. No judge in Pa has the right to reinterpret the Constitution and simplify it by reducing two different states natural born citizen and citizen to one state because he thinks that is what it really means. Generations of children have been taught that a natural born citizen is born on US soil to two citizen parents. The fact that it would suit the Globalist’s plans for it to be otherwise counts for nothing in my book.
“The far more specific question of whether a citizen “at birth” is actually a “natural born citizen” eligible to run for President has absolutely nothing to do with them performing their duties.”
I agree and suspect that with all the concerns being expressed over Senator Cruz, the State Department for the very reason you stated, decided to remove that section from the manual