January 08, 2007

Illegal aliens joining the U.S. military

Esther J. Cepeda of the Sun-Times offers "Illegal to serve?"

...recruiters in Chicago and other cities across the United States are turning away potential applicants who are illegal immigrants -- despite a special wartime provision President Bush signed into law after Sept. 11 allowing them to serve...

...On July 3, 2002, Bush authorized -- in Section 329 of the Immigration and Nationality Act -- an expedited citizenship process for legal immigrants serving in the armed forces in time of war, regardless of their length of residency...

Not so fast. The fly in the illegal immigration supporters' ointment is presented in the last letter on this page:

The fact is that the US military can accept undocumented aliens as recruits when the US is in a declared state of war. Despite what President Bush repeatedly says about the US being involved in a war against terrorism, no such war has been declared by Congress.

The article also quotes Margaret Stock as once again supporting illegal aliens joining the military.

(Via langamp.com/borderblog/?p=4525, which deleted two comments I just left there. Hmmmmm.)

UPDATE: Oddly enough, the comment I left on the last post is... back. I don't know whether it's an issue with them or with me. If the latter, it would be very odd for Firefox to cache the penultimate and not the last version of a page that was viewed.

Posted to Immigration at January 8, 2007 12:07 PM

Comments

If the government is willing to pay as much as it costs to regularize an illegal soldier, who gets to bring in relatives who also go on to net public subsidy at the expense of those whose rights are never to be mentioned, they could offer some nifty incentives to loyal Americans.
Isn't there a morally questionable aspect or several, to the recruitment of mercenary illegals and their relatives from anti-America?

Posted by: John S Bolton at January 10, 2007 01:50 AM

well yes? mexican and others can join the U.S. Military as any time see nothing bad about that.

read John S. Bolton, most American who did do military time got nothing but a V.A. Card and a bill and maybe a low cost home "if that guy could pay for it". But also Understand its not about how much you get its about service to a nation.

Posted by: Fred Dawes at January 10, 2007 08:16 PM