[berdie]

Thank you. I appreciate your response. It makes sense that would have been the starting point.

It also gives me a couple of other areas to research. :)

[drpix]

I've been looking at Plyler v. Doe, Brennan's infamous footnote AND the US v. Wong Kim Ark decision which Brennan cites as a basis for this footnote on birthright citizenship for illegals. What I found was what seemed to me a very glaring omission on Brennan's part. Here are the links and excepts. What is your opinion? (I'm not a lawyer.)

From the full Plyler v. Doe decision [Link] is excerpted its holding:

Held: A Texas statute which withholds from local school districts any state funds for the education of children who were not "legally admitted" into the United States, and which authorizes local school districts to deny enrollment to such children, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Here's Brennen's infamous footnote is #10 [Link]:

Although we have not previously focused on the intended meaning of this phrase, we have had occasion to examine the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. . . ." (Emphasis added.) Justice Gray, writing for the Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649 (1898), detailed at some length the history of the Citizenship Clause, and the predominantly geographic sense in which the term "jurisdiction" was used. He further noted that it was

"impossible to construe the words 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' in the opening sentence [of the Fourteenth Amendment], as less comprehensive than the words 'within its jurisdiction,' in the concluding sentence of the same section; or to hold that persons 'within the jurisdiction' of one of the States of the Union are not 'subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.'"

Id. at 169 U. S. 687.

Justice Gray concluded that

"[e]very citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States."

Id. at 169 U. S. 693. As one early commentator noted, given the historical emphasis on geographic territoriality, bounded only, if at all, by principles of sovereignty and allegiance, 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. See C. Bouve, Exclusion and Expulsion of Aliens in the United States 425-427 (1912). {Red highlight added}

But in the checking the full US v. Wong Kim Ark decision [Link] you'll find that Brennen ignored the following excerpt from Gray's conclusion:

Chinese persons, born out of the United States, remaining subjects of the Emperor of China, and not having become citizens of the United States, are entitled to the protection of, and owe allegiance to, the United States so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here, and are " subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the same sense as all other aliens residing in the United States. {Red highlight added}