The Economy, War, Immigration, and Obama

It is a common story that the economic stimulus plan for the Great Depression was World War II.  Is that why Obama is intensifying our involvement in Afghanistan?  

This all fits with the U.S. Military announcing that immigrant soldiers will be able to get a fast track to citizenship.  For those that didn't read the fine print of the article -- this opportunity is only for those who already have green cards based on their employment.  THIS IS NOT FOR DREAMers - at least not at this time.

The bright side of this is that maybe this ruling will help the nation ease into the DREAM Act.  But we won't know that until the DREAM Act bill comes up in Congress.  I'm sure there is lots going on at this time, but us everyday people generally don't know what happens in the secret negotiations among our Representatives and Senators.

Either way, it seems that our immigrant soldiers will be paying the cost of our military stimilus program by going to Afghanistan and fighting a war against a group (or groups) of people that have never been defeated.  Just ask the Russians and the British.  The place is a disaster for war.  The U.S. didn't help this by the involvement of previous administrations who assisted the Taliban in developing its poppy fields (see the book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim)

The money the country can make from going to war might have been enough to salvage the economy.  But the situation is so bad now, its hard to say what will work. 

link to map

IRAQ Veterans Waiting on U.S. Citizenship

photo: CBS/AP


The following article is about immigrant soldiers returning from Iraq and waiting too long for their citizenship - which is an absolute travesty. Think of how soldiers have to face such a terrible situation there - how many return with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (and the military balking at their treatment) As long as the United States continues to neglect its promise to our immigrant soldiers can we really say we are proud of our country?


With the current situation regarding this delay - what would have happened if the DREAM Act would have passed and thousands and thousands of DREAMERS enlisted then finding the promise of citizenship might not be an honest one.

It is very likely that the DREAM ACT will pass in the next presidential administration - if so will the same problem continue?

February 24, 2008
After the War, a New Battle to Become Citizens
By FERNANDA SANTOS

Despite a 2002 promise from President Bush to put citizenship applications for immigrant members of the military on a fast track, some are finding themselves waiting months, or even years, because of bureaucratic backlogs. One, Sgt. Kendell K. Frederick of the Army, who had tried three times to file for citizenship, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq as he returned from submitting fingerprints for his application.

About 7,200 service members or people who have been recently discharged have citizenship applications pending, but neither the Department of Defense nor Citizenship and Immigration Services keeps track of how long they have been waiting. Immigration lawyers and politicians say they have received a significant number of complaints about delays because of background checks, misplaced paperwork, confusion about deployments and other problems.

“I’ve pretty much given up on finding out where my paperwork is, what’s gone wrong, what happened to it,” said Abdool Habibullah, 27, a Guyanese immigrant who first applied for citizenship in 2005 upon returning from a tour in Iraq and was honorably discharged from the Marines as a sergeant. “If what I’ve done for this country isn’t enough for me to be a citizen, then I don’t know what is.”

The long waits are part of a broader problem plaguing the immigration service, which was flooded with 2.5 million applications for citizenship and visas last summer — twice as many as the previous year — in the face of 66 percent fee increases that took effect July 30. Officials have estimated that it will take an average of 18 months to process citizenship applications from legal immigrants through 2010, up from seven months last year.

But service members and veterans are supposed to go to the head of the line. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush signed an executive order allowing noncitizens on active duty to file for citizenship right away, instead of having to first complete three years in the military. The federal government has since taken several steps to speed up the process, including training military officers to help service members fill out forms, assigning special teams to handle the paperwork, and allowing citizenship tests, interviews and ceremonies to take place overseas.

At the same time, post-9/11 security measures, including tougher guidelines for background checks that are part of the naturalization process, have slowed things down.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which checks the names of citizenship applicants against those in its more than 86 million investigative files, has been overwhelmed, handling an average of 90,000 name-check requests a week. In the fiscal year that ended in September, the F.B.I. was asked to check 4.1 million names, at least half of them for citizenship and green card applicants, a spokesman said.

“Most soldiers clear the checks within 30 to 60 days, or 60 to 90 days,” said Leslie B. Lord, the Army’s liaison to Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that processes citizenship applications. “But even the soldier with the cleanest of records, if he has a name that’s very similar to one that’s in the F.B.I. bad-boy and bad-girl list, things get delayed.”

Such explanations are why Mr. Habibullah has decided that once he does become a citizen — if he ever becomes a citizen — he will change his name.

“I figured that’s part of the reason things got delayed,” he said. “You know, that I have a Muslim name.”

Thousands of Muslim civilians have also found themselves waiting months or years for background checks, and have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in Denver. But advocates for the immigrant service members said that those with pending applications are from a variety of backgrounds and that they do not suspect a pattern of discrimination against Muslims.

Some 31,200 members of the military were sworn in as citizens between October 2002 and December 2007, according to the immigration service, but a spokeswoman, Chris Rhatigan, said she could not determine how long it took for them to be naturalized since the agency does not maintain a database tracking military cases.

Over all, 312,000 citizenship or green card applications are pending name checks, including 140,000 that have been waiting more than six months, immigration officials said. This month, immigration authorities eased background-check requirements for green cards, saying that if applicants had been waiting more than six months, they could be approved without an F.B.I. check, and approvals could be revoked later “in the unlikely event” that troubling information was found.

After hearing complaints from at least half a dozen service members over the past three months, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York has drafted a bill to create a special clearinghouse to ensure that applications from active and returning members of the military are processed quickly and smoothly. A spokesman said several other lawmakers reported hearing many similar stories.

“These are men and women who are risking their lives for us,” Mr. Schumer said in a telephone interview. “They’ve met all the requirements for citizenship, they have certainly proved their commitment to our country, and yet they could lose their lives while waiting for a bureaucratic snafu to untangle.”

In interviews, immigration lawyers and military officials said that in general, the naturalization process takes service members between six months and a year, which is about half the current average wait for civilians. But some cases drag on much longer because of background-check delays or because applications are misplaced, or notices are mailed to stateside addresses after an applicant has been deployed, causing appointments to be missed.

“You try to resolve these things amicably, reaching out to the military, reaching out to immigration officials, but you hit roadblock after roadblock,” said David E. Piver, a Pennsylvania lawyer who filed at least six petitions in federal court over the past five years on behalf of service members experiencing longer than usual delays on their citizenship applications.

“It’s usually not any substantive issue that’s causing those delays,” he said. “What it boils down to are bureaucratic snafus.”

Feyad Mohammed, an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago who lives with his parents in Richmond Hill, Queens, was naturalized last month — four years after he filed the first of four citizenship applications, and six months after his honorable discharge from the Army as a sergeant.

Mr. Mohammed first applied in 2004, after he returned from the first of his two tours in Iraq. But the application seemed to have been lost; when he checked after a few months, he said, no one at the immigration service could tell him where it was or even if it had been received. He filed again in 2005, but missed his interview several months later; it had been scheduled in Iraq, during his second combat tour, but he was home on leave on the appointed day.

After he was discharged in July 2007, Mr. Mohammed filed another application. The paperwork was returned because he had not included a check covering the processing fee, he said, ignoring a Bush administration initiative that exempts combat veterans from application fees for up to a year after discharge. It was then that Mr. Mohammed reached out to Senator Schumer’s office, which helped him file a fourth, and final, time.

When he was sworn in Jan. 25 at the federal courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn, Mr. Mohammed said, he felt “relieved.”

“I was a citizen,” he said. “I could finally move on with my life.”

But Sergeant Frederick, a 21-year-old immigrant from Trinidad, would be awarded citizenship only posthumously, on the day of his burial. He is one of more than 90 immigrant service members to be naturalized after losing their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Sergeant Frederick’s mother, Michelle Murphy, said that he had filed his citizenship application a year before he was deployed to Iraq in 2005, but that his application was sent back to her Maryland home three times — once because of incomplete biographical information, again because he had left a box unchecked, and once more because he had not paid the fee.

Finally, Ms. Murphy said, Sergeant Frederick received a letter saying that the fingerprints he had included with his application could not be read and that he needed to submit new ones. She contacted immigration officials, who arranged for him to submit a new set of fingerprints on Oct. 19, 2005, near his base in Tikrit. On the way back from the appointment, his convoy hit a roadside bomb.

“If somebody is fighting for a country, if he’s deployed, if he’s in the middle of a war, it shouldn’t be that hard for them to become a citizen,” Ms. Murphy, 42, said in a telephone interview.

After his death, the immigration service began accepting enlistment fingerprints with service members’ citizenship applications, provided applicants authorized the military to share their files with immigration officials. A bill to make such sharing automatic has been passed by the House and is pending a final Senate vote.

In the meantime, Mr. Habibullah is working as an aircraft hydraulics mechanic in Connecticut, though he hopes to get a better-paying job in the federal government once he is naturalized. In October, Mr. Habibullah’s father and grandmother became citizens in separate ceremonies, though they applied fully two years after he did.

Mr. Habibullah has passed the citizenship test and been interviewed, and he said he does not know what to do to move his application through the backlog faster.

“Every time I ask about it, I get the same answer: it’s pending the background check,” Mr. Habibullah said as he looked over his military medals, which are displayed on a wall in the Mount Vernon, N.Y., apartment he shares with his wife and 1-month-old son. “I’m at the point right now that I’ve almost given up on it.”



Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

for link to NYT article, click the title of this post


photo: http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2003/07/03/image561669x.jpg

Macario Garcia & the Congressional Medal of Honor

On Veteran's Day 2007

Back in the 1950s and 1960s my father and Macario Garcia used to have a beer together when they got a chance. Macario's older brother Carlos married Tomasita Martinez, whose father (Don Atanacio Martinez) was my Dad's compadre.

I wrote a chapter on Macario Garcia in my new book. It's titled "The Warrior."

Below is an article from the Fort Bend Eagle by Chris Fernandez:

Macario Garcia- Texas Historical Commission dedicates Historical Marker to A Real American Hero...

Macario Garcia was born on January 2, 1920, in Villa de Castaños, Coahuila, Mexico. His parents Josefa and Luciano Garcia were peasant farmers. The family became aware that a better life could be obtained in America. In October 1923, at the tender age of four, Macario, his older brother Carlos, his parents, and his Uncle Felix headed north to America. The Garcia family settled 70 miles East of San Antonio in the town of Waelder, Texas. In 1935 the Garcia family moved to Sugar Land, Texas where they found work on the Paul Schumann Ranch. Macario Garcia remained on the ranch until he was drafted into the Army.

Macario Garcia came from a poor family and was a migrant farm worker for most of his early childhood. Education was a luxury that most migrant families went without. They needed every able body with hands working the fields. Macario often missed school and only achieved the equivalent of a 3rd grade education. It was not uncommon for Hispanic migrant workers to receive a limited education before having to work full time. Once a migrant worker could read and write, and do arithmetic, their education was considered complete. Military records indicate that he earned seven dollars a week as a farm laborer and could speak, read, and write in both English and Spanish.

On November 11, 1942, at age of 22, Macario Garcia was inducted into the United States Army. Although Macario was not yet an American Citizen he proudly and readily served his adopted country. Macario would later state that he felt it was his obligation to do something for his new country. Mr. Garcia stood only 5 feet 5 inches, soon his heart would overshadow his stature. He was sent to Fort Sam Houston, located in Texas for a week of Army Indoctrination. November 21, 1942 Pvt. Garcia was assigned to Company B, 51st. Training Battalion in Camp Robinson Arkansas where he received his basic training.

D-Day the Invasion of Normandy, June 6, 1944, on a 50 mile stretch of beach.

World War (WWII) 1944 the largest Military amphibious assault in history was launched.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the armies of both U.S. and Allied Forces; led the fight in liberating Europe from Nazi Germany and Chancellor Adolph Hitler’s death grip. The first waves of the U.S. 1st Army's 5th Corps were the first to land. First soldiers to land were engineers, men whose job was to rid the beaches of concrete stakes, mines, and other anti-invasion obstacles. The D-Day Invasion was supported by paratroopers, bombers, and warships.

Macario Garcia was involved in the single greatest show of military strategy know to mankind. Macario Garcia landed with the tank division led by General, George S. Patton, who had come across from Great Britain via the English Channel was now physically engaged with the enemy. Macario was injured during a tank battle days after his landing at Normandy. Pvt. Macario Garcia spent approximately 4 months recovering from his wounds. In October of the same year, Pvt. Garcia rejoined his company and was promoted to acting Squad Leader and then received a battlefield commendation to Sergeant. On November 27, 1944, Sergeant Macario Garcia single handedly destroyed 2 enemy emplacements near the town of Grosshau, Germany. Sergeant Garcia was injured on the shoulder and foot, but kept fighting. Macario Garcia fought until the mission was complete by finishing off the machine gun nests.

In August 23, 1945 President Harry S. Truman placed the highest honor a soldier can receive, The Congressional Medal of Honor, rested on the shoulders of one mighty soldier from the D-Day Invasion. The country of Mexico awarded him with their highest honor, Meritor Militar, the equivalent of the Medal of Honor. The ceremony took place in Mexico City on January 8, 1946. On June 25, 1947 Macario Garcia became an American Citizen. He earned his High School diploma in 1951 and in 1952 married.

In 1955 his wife Alicia gave birth to the first of three children, Carlos Roberto. In 1956 their only daughter was born, Maria Theresa. In 1960 the second son and last child, Rene Gustavo, was born.

In 1965 Macario Garcia was promoted to First Sergeant. In 1967 he was promoted to highest enlisted rank possible the rank of Sergeant Major. He would later receive an other promotion to Command Sergeant Major.

In 1963 Macario Garcia would meet and shake hands with President John F. Kennedy. He also attended a dinner during a LULAC affair in Houston, Texas on the eve of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas.

On August 25, 1965, Macario Garcia Day was declared in the city of Houston, Texas. In 1968 "Mac" as he became known, volunteered to go to Vietnam where he would be assigned to the 22nd Replacement Battalion at Cam Ranh Bay where he would spend six months counseling returning veterans on their benefits upon returning to the states.

On Christmas Eve, 1972, Macario Garcia was involved in a head on automobile collision that ultimately took his life. Macario Garcia never knew of the many honors that were given in his name.

This country owes a great debt of gratitude to the many soldiers that never came back from Normandy and that did not come back from WWI, Vietnam or Korea. The free and the brave gave so dearly, so that we could have the rights that so many take for granted everyday.

I would like to thank Lupe Garcia, brother of Macario Garcia for his time, insight and authorization of this page. Lupe Garcia is also a Veteran of the United States Navy and served under the JFK and LBJ Administration. Lupe Garcia is the speaker for the family and became proactive a few years after Macario's death. In his statement Mr. Garcia speaks on a major issue in America today. “It is a heartfelt pain that strikes me every time I see so many standing up in hatred against the Hispanic community. America is turning its back on a community that willingly gave up their sons so that all could enjoy the freedoms and opportunities that this country has to offer. It is hurtful and insulting when political leaders speak negatively about Immigrants and city officials across the country make laws turning away immigrants and criminalizing those just seeking a better life. We know that the infrastructure, social, and economic development of this country was founded by immigrants. “

http://www.fortbendeagle.com/index-2.html


For comments email: miketorres@houston.rr.com

Immigrant Soldiers and Heroes

Some people grimace at the thought of Veteran's Day in 2007. With the true story of how badly our veterans are treated by our government after they are injured, it makes you wonder why in the world anyone would join the military these days - especially to go to a war (Iraq) that is not a war but a bloodbath.

Yet, we are a sovereign nation. We have an Army. I supposed war and the military are just part of being a nation-state.

This nation-state who today has such a negative position regarding immigrants - has gladly taken recruits (and draftees) who are not U.S. citizens... in fact has taken many who were not even U.S. residents - even though they say this is against policy.

Immigrants have served this country well, in fact, in an exceptional manner.

A Veteran's Day Remembrance: Immigrant Medal of Honor Recipients

by Stuart Anderson
CATO Institute


As Veteran's Day approaches, the time has come to pay tribute to those who have given their lives to this country, though they were not born in this country. Immigrants have received the Medal of Honor in every war since the medal was first established. To receive it, a recipient must risk his life, the bravery of his act must be considered beyond the call of duty and distinguished from other acts, and at least two eyewitnesses must have observed the act and provide incontestable evidence that it occurred.

More than 20 percent (over 700) of the Congressional Medal of Honor recipients in U.S. wars have been immigrants. As the official guide to recipients notes, "Those who have received the Medal of Honor since it was established in 1861 as the nation's highest decoration are as different as the melting pot population of our country..."

for complete article: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6269

previously posted on Immigration Prof Blog