I don't think the question of whether a place is 'in' the US comes down to any notion of whether its regional governing authority is subordinate to or a federal

I don't think the question of whether a place is 'in' the US comes down to any notion of whether its regional governing authority is subordinate to or a federal constituent of the national government of the United States. If you want to dispute that as a basis, then people born in DC, or on Indian land, aren't born in the United States. People born in Puerto Rico are born in US territory, subject only to US sovereign laws, with a natural right to US citizenship, and no equivalent right to citizenship of any other sovereign country. There aren't many more cut-and-dried definitions of being born 'in the US' than that. Remember, this article is trying to answer the question 'where were US citizens who live in particular parts of the US born?'[1]. To that question, for Texas resident American Ted Cruz, for example, we would answer 'Canada' - he counts as one of the Texans who were born outside the US, regardless of his citizenship status at birth. I personally naturalized later, but I also count myself among Americans who were born outside the US. Ted and I have that in common, if nothing else. But Puerto Ricans who were born in Puerto Rico when it was part of the United States - i.e., any time after 1897 - were not born outside the US, so counting a Puerto Rican-born American who lives in Florida as born 'overseas' seems like a flat error to me. [1] well, technically it's not completely clear that it's only counting US Citizens who are resident in a given state, because it is actually a survey of census data and, rather famously, the census does not actually ask you if you are a US citizen - it counts residents (and don't forget that the resident population of the US is not made up solely of 'citizens' and 'illegal immigrants'; residents also include a vast number of noncitizen resident legal immigrants). I mean, the headline claims it's a count of where 'Americans' were born, which I guess Canadians and Brazilians might dispute...