Citizenship For Military - Even conservatives accepted historic programs that exchanged military service for naturalization. That is why the administration may have targeted them.
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Citizenship For Military
The US military has begun recruiting immigrants whose employment leads to citizenship. According to a recent report by the Associated Press, dozens of soldiers who were part of a program called MAVNI (Military Equipment Critical to the National Interest) have already been released. That's in addition to the hundreds of recruits who suddenly had their contracts terminated last fall.
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Launched in 2008, the MAVNI program opens the door for immigrants who are in the country legally (including DACA recipients) to register for the military and gain citizenship quickly in exchange for service.
Although the exact number of removals is unknown — the Pentagon has not provided a number, and some officials have said they only failed an unexplained vetting — restrictions on immigrants in the military (that's better. a new report. ) of the administration fully compliant with immigration and immigration policy.
Historically, for immigrants denied full citizenship due to race, the military has been the strongest point of their civil rights. From Asian Americans who gained citizenship after serving in Europe in World War I to African Americans who championed civil rights after returning from World War II, military service created an impossible situation for children.
American racists sometimes fight these recommendations, but they lead to real improvements — which is exactly why the Trump administration aims to end such a program.
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Perhaps the most striking phenomenon of military citizenship is the introduction of Asian immigrants in the early 20th century. It was a time when immigration from many parts of the world continued unabated, but Asian immigrants faced great obstacles. Chinese immigration was halted by the Kannada Exclusion Act in 1882, and the ban extended to Japan in 1907 and the rest of Asia in 1917.
We stopped not only immigration, but also naturalization. The 14th Amendment and the Naturalization Act of 1870 created a black-and-white definition of a CITIZEN. As always, white people can become citizens. But now, as well as in 1857, "African people", especially former slaves, were deprived of citizenship.
Anyone outside these categories, including Asian, Mexican, and some Middle Eastern immigrants, is not considered for citizenship. They are obviously not African, but are they white? Several cases have raised questions and forced judges to overturn the definition of white, which excluded Chinese, Japanese and Indian immigrants. Therefore, Asian immigrants cannot become American citizens, even though their children become citizens through the naturalization process.
However, this does not prevent Asian immigrants from serving in the US military and fighting for citizenship in exchange for their labor. Since 1862, the US government has recognized the value of immigrant military service and granted express citizenship to "any alien" who had lived in the US for at least one year and served in the US military.
Why It Matters That Trump Is Challenging The Decades Old Tradition Of Immigrants Getting Citizenship Through The Military
After the US entered World War I, mass mobilization brought hundreds of non-citizen immigrants into the armed forces (the Selective Service Act required any male immigrant intending to become a citizen to register for the draft) and in 1918 and 1920 almost a quarter of a million of these soldiers were natives, many before even going to the front.
Throughout the war, the government repeatedly declared military service a civilian nightmare, a testing ground for immigrants to prove their loyalty, courage, and readiness as Americans. Reviewing the recruiting process, the general exulted, "From the melting pot of the United States we will pour a new America, founded and ready to make the world safe for our Democracy." The War Department even included civilian work as part of wartime training for "American" immigrants in the service.
Assistant Secretary of War Henry Breckinridge saw this as an expansion of conscription. The warrior, "of whatever race—Teutonic, Slavic, Czech, Italian, Celtic, or Anglo-Saxon—rubs all his elbows in common service to the common Fatherland—except for the hyphen—to the top of the Stars and Stripes. and in an instant the melting pot is melted. "
Note that Breckinridge did not include Asian immigrants in his state list, but these immigrants quickly turned their wartime work into naturalization after hearing the promise of the citizen-soldier.
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Without a sympathetic judge and a federal agent, their efforts would have been futile.
The main position of the Naturalization Bureau was that Asian immigrants were neither white nor black and were not eligible for citizenship. But in December 1918, federal court judge Horace W. Vaughan announced that Canadian, Korean, and Japanese soldiers would be naturalized, to the surprise of the Naturalization Bureau. He explained, "We put them in our service, and they think they are willing to risk their lives in our service." He found an accomplice in Deputy Immigration Commissioner Raymond Crist.
As historian Lucy E. Salyer has shown, both tried to alienate hundreds of Asian soldiers. They continued to issue citizenship papers to Asian soldiers even after the Supreme Court ruled in 1925 that any soldier who was ineligible for citizenship because of "color or race" regardless of action. Christine argued that anyone with proof of citizenship is a citizen regardless of the court's position, but her opinion is not legally binding.
But a hardline government official can't save an entire group from a judge forever, and despite Christine's best efforts, this class of immigrants has been denied legal citizenship. What Asian veterans needed was an act of Congress that would allow them to obtain their own citizenship, which veteran Tokutaro Slocum received thanks to his work.
Citizenship Through Military Service: Benefits And Process
Born in Japan and immigrating to America at the age of 10, Slocum was studying law at Columbia when the United States entered World War I. He dropped out of school, fought in France, was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and was reinstated in 1925 after a Supreme Court ruling that stripped him of his post. restoration. CITIZEN, along with all other World War Veterans in your position.
Vaughan, Crist, and Slocum were interested in the idea of working on race at a time when citizenship was tied to whiteness and immigration sentiment was high. Indeed, during the struggle to naturalize Asian-American veterans, the US imposed strict racial quotas on immigration—in a famous 1924 law—and the Ku Klux Klan thrived under its "100 percent American" agenda.
Also, the Nye-Lea Act of 1935, granted to Slocum and other veteran citizens, did not pave the way for other Asian immigrants; this is for seniors only. Nor did it save Slocum from other racist laws. In 1942, when the United States began rounding up Japanese immigrants and African Americans, Slocum and his family were sent to the Manzanar internment camp in California's Owens Valley.
Slocum's fate reminds us of the limits of military citizenship: If some are forced to perform exemplary acts of bravery and self-sacrifice to prove themselves worthy of citizenship because of their race or ethnicity, something has gone wrong. Still, the idea that military service could be a way for immigrants to gain historic rights was strong enough to attract even traditional leaders.
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So it's no surprise that the Trump administration wants to close that door as part of its broader effort to crack down on immigrants and restrict immigration. Since 2001, more than 100,000 immigrants have been naturalized through military service (10,400 through special military operations in the national interest).
Slocum's story should remind us that even when the country's laws and options are limited—for reasons of racism—activists, government officials, and judges can step back and help open up.
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