This is incorrect. John McCain was born in a foreign country, but he was born to American citizen parents, which made him natural born anyway. Someone who was born to noncitizen parents, but born within the geographical US would also be considered natural born. The US definition of "natural born citizen" is a lot more flexible than what most countries will allow even for naturalized citizens.
The more interesting story is that of Ted Cruz, who had a noncitizen father and was born in Canada.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/records-and-authe...
The arguments as I recall were basically two-fold: 1.) At the time, it was the Canal Zone (which wasn't quite US soil but maybe close enough) and 2.) There were some long-standing common law precedents related to agents of the king, diplomats, etc.
The only complicated area in law is when only a single parent is a US citizen and the child is born overseas. This was a consequence of the 20th century reality that the US had vast numbers of military personnel stationed globally.
This is why Obama, McCain and Ted Cruz are eligible for the Presidency
edit: doh. Forgot that Obama was born in Hawaii
True, though there is no clear consensus on what the former means, it is clear it is narrower than the latter.
> The law in America forbids a foreign-born citizen from being president.
That is not one of the major theories as to the import of the “natural born citizen” rule.
> By contrast, according to the wikipedia page on the subject (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_Japanese), Japan has no restrictions on foreign-born citizens.
Japan actually has much narrower restrictions on who can become head of state than the US does. It just doesn't combine that role with the head of government.
It seems like I was operating under a false understanding of it, and I'll remember that for the future.
> Japan actually has much narrower restrictions on who can become head of state than the US does. It just doesn't combine that role with the head of government.
Sure, fine, you can only be the Emperor of Japan by blood, just like you can only be "The Queen" (as recognized by the UK, Canada, and Australia) by blood. It's a ceremonial role, and I don't think it impacts my overall point.
This is why it became a thing with Obama. If he was born in the US then it was unambiguous. If he was born outside the US then the aggregate circumstances of his birth had a legitimate potential, under the rules at the time, to deem him not “natural-born”. It isn’t terribly surprising that people with a political angle were going to litigate that in the court of public opinion, and the vast majority of Americans have no idea how those citizenship laws work.
No the consensus is pretty clear and only gets muddied up when there are political reasons for trying to invalidate someone's presidential candidacy. To become a citizen involves going through a "naturalization" process. A natural-born citizen is anyone whose citizenship came by birth rather than through naturalization. There may have been some ambiguity when the Republic was young, borders were porous, and documentation to track births and deaths and such was scarce or easily forged. But today we've got that all pretty much locked down.
The US has one law making that distinction, and another in the Constitution guaranteeing equal protection under the law, which controls every other law. Beyond a doubt, and one minor, extremely narrow case, the US does not distinguish.
And the USA distinguishes "natural-born american citizens" from "american citizens". The law in America forbids a foreign-born citizen from being president.
Similarly, English also has a special term, a "natural-born citizen", to distinguish this difference. Having different phrases for two different things doesn't really mean much.
By contrast, according to the wikipedia page on the subject (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_Japanese), Japan has no restrictions on foreign-born citizens. They can become Prime Minister and hold other political offices. The difficulties lie in gaining such a citizenship, not in what you can legally do once you have it.
I do think there are valid points you could make about how Japan's policies and culture have resulted in relatively low foreign immigration, but the talk of "having different words for things" and types of citizenship doesn't further your point nor seem based in fact.