Solves and avoids politics --- courts have the authority to rule on Border Policy and provide citizenship.

In order for the Court to provide a remedy in naturalization based equal protection cases, it would need to find a jurisprudential foundation to counter the plenary power doctrine and sanction such a remedy. For citizenship applicants stymied by unconstitutional naturalization provisions, meaningful relief ultimately must come in the form of a grant of citizenship, so the doctrinal foundation would need to support judicial conferral of citizenship. This Note considers two possible doctrinal solutions: indirect or direct conferral of citizenship-the former a byproduct of the Court's striking down an unconstitutional statute and the latter stemming directly from the Court's equitable powers. In the end, only equity can provide a strong enough foundation to support judicial conferral. B. Indirect Conferral of Citizenship If the Court finds that a statute violates the Equal Protection Clause, it may strike down the statute or sever the offending clauses;10 3 this ensures that everyone is judged under a constitutional law.1'4 Indirect conferral of citizenship could mean nothing more than striking down offending clauses of naturalization statutes and allowing petitioners who meet the remaining, valid requirements to naturalize through those channels. At first glance, this means of conferral seems unexceptionable, as courts regularly sever offending clauses from federal acts.105 In many cases, these courts use the statute's own severability clause as a guide. Such clauses include instructions on severing, providing, for example, that if any portion of the Act is struck down, the rest of the statute shall remain in effect. Given that the INA includes such a clause, and thus contemplates severance, effecting such severance cannot inherently be seen as judicial overreach.10 6 From one perspective, merely severing the unconstitutional provisions of the statute would not implicate the conferral issue: "[Once the two unconstitutional clauses are excised from the statute, that statute [would] operate[ ] automatically to confer citizenship . ..'at birth.'" 07 On the other hand, severance could be seen as effecting a conferral of citizenship, albeit indirect, contrary to Pangilinan's strictures; the practical import of such severance would be the indirect conferral of citizenship to those included in the statute by virtue of the severance. The Ninth Circuit panel in Ahumada-Aguilar followed this path in declaring petitioner a citizen: "The evidence in the record sufficiently demonstrates that Ahumada-Aguilar is the child of a U.S. citizen father, satisfying the requirements of § 1409(a)(1) and (a)(2).' ' 1 o8