From Draft NOtices, October-December 2017
— Isidro Ortiz
A previous Draft NOtices article, “Removing a Few Bad Hombres” (July-September 2017), discussed the deportation of immigrant military veterans. Non-citizen immigrant recruits in the United States now find themselves possibly facing a similarly cruel and irreversible fate. In this case their potential deportation is not due to any criminal actions on their part. Instead its roots lie in Department of Defense (DoD) proposal to terminate the Military Accession Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program over security concerns. The program’s end would result in the cancellation of enlistment contracts with non-citizen recruits. As reported in media venues such as NPR, this action would leave 1,000 non-citizen recruits without legal protection from deportation. Their plight is yet another reminder of the highly problematic and untrustworthy nature of the institutional commitment to those who aspire to serve in the military. However, unlike others who have been victims of broken promises and lies, these individuals face not only frustration and disappointment but also the prospect of finding themselves bureaucratically dumped into the military-to-deportation pipeline.
The MAVNI program was established in 2008 to allow a limited number of non-citizens with only temporary visas to join the U.S. military. It “is designed to attract two types of recruits into the military: (a) health care professionals and (b) individuals who possess critical foreign language skills.” The enlistment incentive has been the opportunity of an expedited path to U.S. citizenship, i.e., a fast track to citizenship.
Although taken by surprise the recruits have refused to become passive victims. Several have initiated litigation against the Department of Defense. Mahlon Kirwa, Santhosh Meenhallimath and Ashok Viswanathan, individuals serving in the “Select Reserve,” for example, joined as plaintiffs on their behalf and other recruits. In their suit, Kirwa et al., v. United States Department of Defense, they allege that they and others are “are the victims of a misguided and unlawful attempt to deprive them of their right to seek United States citizenship.” They claim that “as non-citizen soldiers serving honorably during wartime,” they “have an absolute statutory right to apply to become naturalized U.S. citizens, but the DoD is refusing to certify their naturalization application eligibility as required by law, leaving these soldiers to languish in immigration limbo, notwithstanding their military service to this Nation.” Such actions on the part of the DoD, the plaintiffs also claim, “are contrary to law and lack the honor, loyalty, and respect that Defendants owe to these Plaintiff-soldiers.”
In the last presidential debate in 2016, when candidate Donald Trump announced that his immigration policy would emphasize deportations, little attention was paid to the issue of how veterans might be affected. Few, if any, inquired whether veterans would be deported. The lack of attention and concern are partially due to the persistence of myths about the immigration issue and veterans. Moreover, since Trump had earlier suggested that the deportation would focus on getting rid of “bad hombres,” it was assumed that veterans would not be affected by President Trump’s immigration policy. After all, it’s hard to conceive of men and women who have served their country as “bad” people meriting deportation. Unfortunately, veterans have not been a class unaffected by the issue, and myths persist about veterans and immigration. Among the myths are the following:
Winsted Area Peace Action has been visiting high schools in northwestern Connecticut for at least ten years. The purpose of our visits has been to introduce and discuss with students alternative methods of service to the country and non-military means of earning money after high school. Our goal is to bring some contrast to the appeal of the military, which spends many millions of dollars in its recruiting efforts. We make information available on such organizations as AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, Peace Brigades International and Heifer International, all of which take people who are age 18 or older.
