Born in the USA Not Necessarily Enough?

I found a copy of Mrs Vache Folle's grandfather's passport application from 1923. Even though Aksentyj was born in Jersey City in 1904 or thereabouts, his family had migrated back to the Carpathians shortly thereafter, and he was required by the State Department to establish that he had not manifested an intent to abandon his US citizenship by leaving the country. Aksentyj pointed out that he had not had a choice in the matter, having been an infant when the family left the US and that he had had to wait until his younger brother was old enough to help out on the farm before leaving the family.

To bolster his argument, Aksentyj reported that his father Ambrozy had lived in the US for fifteen years. This was not true. The family spent only about five years in the states. But this does not seem to have an impact on the decision to grant him a passport.

Aksentyj returned to America, settled in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and lived the American dream by working as a coal miner and dying before the age of 60 from lung disease. Had he stayed in the Carpathians, he might have been enslaved by the Nazis like his younger siblings or deported in the Polish Communists' campaign of ethnic cleansing following WW2.

Aksentyj had a bunch of children who now live all across the USA. Some are successful; some are loons. His brothers' descendants still live in Poland, some of them in the same village where the Madzula family has lived for centuries. Mrs VF and I visited them a couple of years ago, and she still keeps in touch with her cousin. They are lovely people.

I wonder. Would a child born in America and having an American birth certificate have difficulty getting a passport today?