Quote:1. I think it is quite a stretch, a stretch so far that no court would uphold it. Trying to use "jurisdiction" as a loophole would end in failure based upon the simple fact that, as jagibelieve pointed out, every single person in the US (aside from the few covered by diplomatic immunity) is under the jurisdiction of its laws, including a newborn child.
2. Building a wall is a physical impossibility unless you want to start effectively ceding large chunks of land to Mexico by building it 20-50 miles off the border in areas where terrain and/or the natural flow of the Rio Grande make it impossible to build it on the dotted line. Closing the border is a practical impossibility and a shot in our own foot economically.
3. Huh? Where'd that come from?
4. I'd be all in favor of this. I don't think it's unreasonable to tell parents that they can leave their citizen child in the care of legally-present relatives or the state and return home, or take their child home with them knowing that the birth has been documented and a birth certificate issued, the child is a citizen, and that child is free to return anytime so long as they cross the border with a legal US resident or by themself if they're of age to do so. The birth of a child in the US should not grant parents here illegally the right to stay in the US. That just opens up too many problems, both legal and ethical (should a woman eight months pregnant really be sneaking through the desert in July?), to be helpful at all in solving the problem of illegal immigration.
1.) first It would not be the argument that the child or the parents aren't under the law or that america is ceding its jurisdiction. The argument would be that America has standing as an expression of its jurisdiction to control who is in this country, and that someone who violates the law would forfeit the jus soli conferment of citizenship to the child. Again would it hold up in court, i'm not sure. But if i were submitting the brief then thats how i would structure the argument and Donald Trump has mentioned that a challenge to the universality of jus soli doctrine based ON the text of the 14th amendment would be the way that he would try to deal with the births to illegal immigrants.
2.) In the actual building of the wall obviously you would use the natural terrain in certain areas coupled with mobile surveillance. That would mean that it wouldn't have to be contiguous and thus cost less. We landed a man on another celestial mass in 1969. The great wall was built how long ago? I think it can be done. And a better word would be control. obviously you want free flow of legitimate commerce, but at the same time cutting off roughly 40% of the drug trafficking (the cartells not immigrants) wouldn't be all that bad either.
3.) Its just an aside. The establishment clause is called the establishment clause for a reason. At the time the constitution was written, there was actually something called an established religion, meaning an official state religion that everyone was subject to. That provides direct context to the plain meaning of the first amendment as it regards certain forms of faith based expression within the public square. The concept of a great wall of separation was added later and doesn't appear in the constitution. It was just an aside about the true plain text of some amendments that we take for granted.
4.) I think that's a reasonable standpoint and the path of least resistance as a legal remedy.
I'd just like to reiterate. I think that there can be a common sense debate about how best to secure the border. I think that there can be common sense debate about how we handle the parents of kids born here. I think there can be a common sense debate about how many people we want to let into the country on an annual basis as we assess the economic impact. I also think that we can all agree that the current system of no holds bared millions of people here undocumented isn't really all that common sense.
