Latinos always has been the primary focus for U.S. Recruitment.

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The US military says it has met its recruitment goals for 2008, However, signing new soldiers is getting more difficult, with an unpopular war in Iraq and open-ended commitments both there and in Afghanistan.

New figures reveal there has been a 40 per cent drop in African-Americans signing up for the army. The Pentagon wants to expand the size of the army to 547,000 soldiers by the year 2010, and are counting on Hispanics to fill the gap. To do so, recruiters are turning to incentives to bolster their numbers. Mike Kirsch explores the sometimes questionable tactics being used to entice Latino recruits into the US army.
Back then in 1967 most of the young chicanos were about to gain a new title from the draft board. Letter "A" And it's mean that they should be the first to be shipped out to Vietnam to dodge bullets. How come on the Military services the Minorities are the Majority? It's a lot easier for our students to carry a gun than a book?.

The First U.S. Military spouse to be Naturalized Overseas.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced that Zita Chouchan has become the first U.S. military spouse to be naturalized overseas.

Her eligibility to become a U.S. citizen while still overseas was possible due to President George W. Bush signing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 into law. The new law included amending portions of the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow certain spouses of U.S. military personnel to apply for and obtain citizenship while overseas

In general, a person must have status as a permanent resident in the U.S. and have lived there for five years before being eligible for citizenship. In some cases, such as spouses of U.S. citizens, the period is as little as three years.

Members of the U.S. military who are U.S. permanent residents can also apply for expedited citizenship after serving for one year during peace time or immediately during times of hostility.

Mrs. Chouchan became a United States citizen along with 20 soldiers stationed throughout Germany and Kosovo.

When Nok Kells' American military husband died in a traffic accident three years ago, the government began deportation proceedings against her. It's called the widow penalty. Nok is one of 160 widows and widowers facing deportation because their U.S. citizen spouses died less than two years after their marriages. Nok Kells and her lawyer explain how they are fighting to legally get Nok and her two children clearance to stay in the country.
The Mark Krikorian mindset, which wants to clamp down on legal immigrants or turns a blind eye to their punishment, I have never understood. We don't need legal immigrants? The US is facing a shortage of 800,000 nurses in a little over 10 years. That will affect the healthcare system of this country. Sure so lets cut back on the total of visas given out to trained nurses. Makes sense? Nooooooooo!
Nor does the Widow Penalty. Widows like Mrs. Kells are legal immigrants, not terrorists. They haven't committed any crime, and therefore if the marriage was valid, there should be no reason for them not to be able to remain in this country. Death doesn't totally end the obligations of marriage. A widow is still responsible for debts and other obligations they and their spouse signed onto before one of them died.

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Act now to block Blackwater's mercenary base on the California border.

Blackwater USA, the private right-wing mercenary army that has spiraled out of control in Iraq, is trying to set up a para-military base right here in California, populated by 360 staff and "students." They want to acquire 824 acres of land in a sleepy rural corner of San Diego County to build a mercenary training facility, consisting of 15 firing ranges, a helipad, and a heavy vehicle operator's course covering the equivalent of 10 football fields.

No way. No Blackwater. Not in California. Not in America.

Military contractor Blackwater wants to train Border Patrol agents on the U.S./ Mexican Border.





Military security contractor Blackwater Worldwide asked a federal court judge Tuesday to force San Diego to issue permits required to open a new indoor military training facility in the city.

The company claimed in a motion filed in San Diego federal court that it stands to lose a $400 million Navy training contract unless the center opens by June 2. Blackwater claims final permits have been withheld for political reasons after city inspectors initially approved the project because anti-Blackwater rhetoric had reached a "feverish pitch."

"This is an election year in San Diego," wrote Brian Bonfiglio, Blackwater's project manager, in court papers.

Blackwater has been targeted by local anti-war activists since 2006, when the Moyock, N.C., company bought a defunct chicken ranch in the mountains about 40 miles east of San Diego with plans for converting it into a training camp for local and federal law enforcement, including Border Patrol.

The company dropped those plans in March. The same month, city inspectors approved permit applications for a 61,000 square-foot indoor facility in Otay Mesa, an industrial warehouse park along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Bonfiglio.

The facility would house an indoor firing range for training sailors from nearby naval facilities in defense tactics against the threat of terrorist attacks by small boats in harbor.

Blackwater contends that elected officials forced the city to withhold

final approval for occupancy and called for a review by the city planning commission only after activists made it a campaign issue. On May 16, Mayor Jerry Sanders issued a stop work order, while City Attorney Michael Aguirre issued an opinion finding the project required additional review.
Both are in the midst of hotly contested campaigns ahead of the June 3 election.

A spokesman for Sanders said the mayor deferred comment to the city attorney's office. Aguirre told The Associated Press he did not believe that taking the matter to federal court was appropriate because the review hadn't been completed.

"What we are saying is that it has to be thoroughly reviewed. The community has to be given the opportunity to comment," said Aguirre.

A hearing was scheduled for June 2.

Blackwater employees are currently embroiled in a federal investigation over a deadly Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad involving several of the company's contractors.
Iraqi witnesses have described the shooting as an unprovoked attack in which the U.S. contractors killed motorists, bystanders and children.

Blackwater, hired by the State Department to guard U.S. diplomats in Iraq, says its contractors were responding to a Baghdad car bombing when they were ambushed by insurgents, touching off a firefight.

Three Iraqis, including the father of a slain 9-year-old boy, appeared Tuesday before a federal grand jury considering the matter in Washington.

Honoring another Green card Soldier who died serving in the U.S. Military services. Army Spc. Arturo Huerta-Cruz.



Lawmakers at Washington proposing recruiting the undocumented for the Military forces.

This month's death of Army Spc. Arturo Huerta-Cruz in Iraq cast a spotlight on troops serving in the U.S. military who are not American citizens.

Huerta-Cruz, 23, was born in a small town in rural Mexico and moved to Clearwater with his family when he was 10. He was a legal permanent resident, or a "green card" soldier.

That made him an exception. Noncitizens account for about 5 percent of the troops in all the branches of the U.S. military. Noncitizens now must have green cards to enlist.

But as the nation fights wars on two fronts, some wonder whether the military should recruit more heavily among immigrants here — even undocumented ones — as well as foreigners in their own countries.

Yes, say some intellectuals at Washington, D.C., think tanks.

"Those of us who support recruiting foreigners believe they are often very skilled, motivated, and in the great American tradition of immigration," Michael O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution senior fellow on foreign policy said in an e-mail.

The "Dream Act" bill that failed in Congress last year would have done more than legalize undocumented high school students who aspire to college. It also would have given green cards to undocumented high school students who served in the military.

Such students "are well educated, they are not troublemakers, they are bilingual," said Jorge Mariscal, a professor of Latino studies at the University of California, San Diego.

"The military wants to get their hands on those folks," added Mariscal, a Vietnam veteran.

The nonprofit CNA Corp. based in Virginia has recommended mining the legal immigrant community more heavily for military recruits.

"One overlooked source of military manpower is immigrants and their families," according to a 2005 report by CNA, which advises public employers on issues ranging from national security to international affairs.

"In fact," the organization concluded, "much of the growth in the recruitment-eligible population will come from immigration

Along with immigrant groups who have fought for the United States — Irish-Americans in the Civil War, for example — noncitizens also have enlisted since the Revolutionary War.

Green card soldiers have received widespread publicity during the Iraq war because some of the first casualties were Latin-American immigrants.

One was Lance Cpl. Jose Antonio Gutierrez, 22, from Southern California.

Gutierrez was an orphan in Guatemala. Fleeing poverty, he came to the United States illegally. In Southern California, he entered the foster care system and got a green card.

He joined the Marines.

He was killed on March 21, 2003, by enemy fire as American troops tried to secure Umm Qasr. A movie about him, The Short Life of Jose Antonio Gutierrez, was released last year.

After the war started, President Bush signed an executive order allowing immigrants in the military to apply for citizenship immediately. Congress followed with legislation that shortened the time that immigrants in the military have to wait during peacetime to apply for citizenship, from three years to one year.

As of February, there were 20,326 immigrants in active duty in all branches of the military. Another 13,151 were in the Reserves.

It's a small slice of the military, but CNA recommends that the armed forces should target more legal immigrants as recruits.

The foreign-born population in the United States at the time of the CNA report — 12 percent — was at least twice as high as their representation in the military.

Also, a third of the world's population is younger than 15, and many of those young people will make their way to the United States, where some will become legal residents.

For the military, the linguistic and cultural diversity of noncitizens are especially valuable, the CNA authors said.

They add that many immigrants are interested in the expedited process for citizenship that enlisted immigrants receive.

Meanwhile, O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Max Boot have called for a "new chapter in the annals of American immigration."

Their proposal: give foreigners recruited from other countries as well as those already here citizenship after four years of military service. That, they believe, could create a path toward assimilation for undocumented immigrants without green cards. Besides, they note, the military already relaxed age and other restrictions, including those accepting enlistees with criminal records, to meet recruiting goals.

"The idea of offering citizenship to foreigners who first join the armed forces should be a winner for everyone," they wrote in the Washington Post in 2006. "It is good for immigrants. … It is good for a beleaguered American military that is simply too small for the tasks it has been handed."

Not surprisingly, others oppose the idea of increasing the number of noncitizens fighting for American ideals.

The military would become a low-wage occupation like other industries now dominated by immigrants, warns Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors more restrictive immigration policies.

"If enlisting were a way to get legalized or a way to get into the United States," Krikorian said, "soldiering would become a job Americans would not do very rapidly."

Some in the Hispanic community, already weary of recruitment among its youths, agree.

Said Mariscal: "It would be another example of the exploitation of cheap labor."

Even now, American citizenship is not guaranteed for immigrant serving in the military, Mariscal said. Meanwhile, some countries strip their nationals of citizenship if they serve in foreign militaries.

"Those people who did it would have no country," Mariscal said.

In Clearwater, Huerta-Cruz — one of 144 immigrants who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 — was buried Tuesday.

Calvary Catholic Cemetery on U.S. 19 is his final resting place.

And one day, the United States could become his home country.

That's because Army officials have said they will seek posthumous citizenship for Huerta-Cruz.