Originally Posted by
GUWonder
shorelife, it doesn't work that way today. US citizens born abroad ordinarily retain their US citizenship even in the absence of what you mention unless the US citizen is able and willing to deliberately renounce their US citizenship and actually does deliberately renounce their US citizenship.
US citizens born abroad to US parent(s) -- parent(s) who have filed a report of birth of a US citizen abroad and meet the INA conditions -- do not have US citizenship by way of naturalization but are considered natural-born US citizens as the US has only two categories of US citizens: natural-born US citizens and naturalized US citizens.
Of course you're correct about the change in citizenship laws to protect those born abroad of an American parent...however, it's
always been true that there are only two categories of U.S. citizen (natural-born and naturalized), the difference was that previously there were some situations for "natural born" overseas that congress eventually came to see as discriminatory or unfair burden on the citizen. The OP would still be well advised to have documentation from his parent's doctor about the health crisis that led him to leave the U.S. with an expiring American passport.