US Presidential Election - Monitoring Swing States

[Final-Fan]

StarDoor said:

Final-Fan said:

Let's get down to brass tacks here.  What do you imagine is meant by the word "jurisdiction"? 

I imagine it to mean the area and people over which the United States has full legal authority and power, which I believe includes illegal immigrants.  That is, I believe Mexico doesn't have the legal right to interfere with what the USA does with a Mexican who illegally immigrated to the United States.  Diplomats are an example of a group in the United States but not fully subject to its authority; their diplomatic immunity means that they cannot be held accountable for crimes without their country's permission.  The only thing the USA can do is expel them from its territory. 

We can look at the contemporary laws at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment to see what they meant by jurisdiction. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 states that "all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." If someone from Mexico illegally enters the United States, they are still subject to Mexico, and any children they give birth to are Mexican subjects as well. You are still considered to be under the jurisdiction of your home country while abroad, which is why you can be prosecuted for US crimes in another country. Taking all this into account, the courts could certainly use legal precedent to rescind birthright citizenship to illegal aliens, if not all aliens.

Of course, that assumes that courts need any sort of precedent or legal arguments at all. Like I said, if abortion rights can be pulled out of thin air, anything goes. Thanks, judicial activism!

Just because the US still cares if its citizens commit crimes abroad doesn't mean that they have the authority to go over there and arrest them.  Either the government has to work with the foreign government in question or just wait until the criminal comes home, AFAIK.  So I have to disagree with your analysis of which nation can be fairly said to "have jurisdiction" over that person at that time.  I'm not a lawyer, though. 

When the constitutional amendment in question was being written, I have a well-sourced article reporting that its framers were concerned with excluding diplomats and quasi-sovereign Indians, and no one else.  In fact, if I recall correctly, the US didn't even have laws limiting immigration at the time!  (I may be misremembering something here, please correct me if that's wrong.) 

The only other Supreme Court involvement on the issue is a footnote in a 1982 decision in the case Plyler v. Doe, which dealt with the issue of whether states must provide education to children not “legally admitted” into the United States. In that case, Justice William Brennan, writing the majority opinion in the 5-4 decision, stated that “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.”

Considering that this argument of yours flies in the face of current precedent, aren't you the one on the side of radical judicial activism? 

And going back to what you bolded, it doesn't seem to me that you actually directly addressed this question:  if the USA is, for example, prosecuting and potentially jailing an illegal immigrant from Mexico, what power does Mexico have over the USA's actions?