Fighting for one’s country is the highest level of service someone can give to their nation. Fighting for another country because you believe in its values is even more remarkable. The United States has millions of brave men and women who serve our country in the armed forces. But there is a subset of these men and women who serve in the American military as citizens of other nations.
There are about 20,500 members of the American military that are not U.S. citizens. They are often called “green card warriors,” since they are permanent residents, but they do not have citizenship. Attempting to answer their needs, in October 2001 President Bush signed into law an act granting active-duty non-citizens who have served in war since Sept. 11, 2001, the right to apply for immediate citizenship, bypassing most of the hassles that go into the normal citizenship application process.
But as with many things in our government, immediate does not mean immediate, and we still have thousands of non-Americans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan under the American flag. This is a disservice to these brave men and women who believe in our country enough to fight for it even though they can’t yet partake in the benefits of citizenship.
Since October 2001, around 37,000 non-citizen members of our military have been granted American citizenship. This is a great thing. If you believe in America enough to fight for us, than I am honored to have you as a fellow citizen.
But there are over 7,000 applications still pending for citizenship from these green card warriors. The process takes seven to ten months and requires lawyers and time on the part of the serviceman or servicewoman. The problem with this is that many of these members of our military are being sent on multiple tours of duty, so it is hard for them to complete the necessary paperwork and other requirements in an unnecessarily long and drawn out process.
Take U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Mario Ramos-Villalta, a citizen of El Salvador. He has served two tours of duty in Iraq and is about to be sent to Afghanistan. His humvee came under attack in Iraq and he won a Purple Heart. And yet he still was not an American because his paperwork was still processing. It was not until CNN ran a story about him on March 20 that all of a sudden his citizenship cleared. Ramos-Villalta is now an American citizen, but only because of the unique pressure applied, because of the publicity from that story. For all the veterans out there who haven’t had a 24-hour news network run a profile of them, there’s no real hope in sight.
Ramos-Villalta told CNN that a burden had been lifted from him since he was worried and frustrated by not having American citizenship — while reiterating his hope that his fellow soldiers in the same situation he found himself can find similar support from the country they have fought for. He told the interviewer “I just hope that everybody else in the same situation gets citizenship real fast and the government can speed up the process.”
It should not take media coverage for these green card warriors to get American citizenship. These people appreciate and understand the freedoms Americans take for granted better than most Americans, because they have fought to protect those freedoms. They deserve better from the United States government. They deserve immediate citizenship, not the ability to immediately apply for citizenship and then get caught in webs of bureacratic intransigence.
The United States has an unfortunate history of not treating its returning veterans as well as we should. After World War II, despite the amazing accomplishments of the Tuskegee Airmen, they returned to the United States to face a still-segregated army and Jim Crow laws in the South. After Vietnam, the brave men who fought in the worst possible circumstances were mocked by many anti-war protestors.
Sadly, this is still the case, as veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan today are not properly taken care of by the government, as evidenced by the wretched conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center and the lack of proper mental care for veterans. The Veterans Administration is chronically underfunded and is unable to provide the medical coverage veterans deserve.
Not making it simple and fast for non-citizens in the military to get American citizenship is an unconscionable injustice on the part of the United States. The U.S. should grant citizenship to any non-American in the military immediately upon return from their first tour of duty in a war zone. Once you have fought for America, there shouldn’t be a question as to whether or not you qualify for full-fledged citizenship.
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