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recruit foreigners to US military - immigrants soldiers with green cards

Stuck in the Iraqi desert, fighting a war for a country not yet his, U.S. Army Sgt. Leopold Scartin and other troops at Camp Dogwood hung a bit of home outside their desert-tan tent: the tricolor Mexican flag.

Making up about 7 percent of America's active fighting force, immigrants with green cards -- Mexicans the major group among them -- are risking their lives not just for advancement within the Army, but also for a leg up on the road to U.S. citizenship. As America celebrated its 300th year of independence this weekend, immigrants offered their individual breed of patriotic sacrifice, and their numbers are rising even as the Army has struggled to meet recruiting goals.

Their service is steeped in pride, but also in the paradoxes of loyalty inherent in serving under a foreign flag. "If I die over there, I'm not even dying for my own country," says Scartin, who is based at Fort Bliss, Texas.

To the public, the responsibility of immigrant soldiers is equally complicated: Even as the nation honors their exemplary service, there is ambivalence over how big a role non-citizens must play. Even the Declaration of Independence, in its litany of complaints about England, railed beside the use of "foreign mercenaries." Today, the notion that America may be, effectively, hiring foreigners to do its dirty work, is an ethical quandary exaggerated by the quiet loosening of requirements -- and increasing of benefits -- for immigrants who will shoulder rifles for Uncle Sam.

"There are a lot of stories ... about young men and women who signed up knowing that they would eventually gain their citizenship, who were subsequently killed," says Charles Pera, a defense-policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. "The question is: Was their ultimate sacrifice useful ?"

Recognizing the rising importance of immigrants in an Army that has struggled to meet its recruiting goals, the government is hastening citizenship for those who serve in the Armed Forces long term. There were 28,000 immigrant soldiers five years ago; that number has climbed to 39,000 now, not counting the thousands of foreign contractors hired since 9/11. Up to now, 59 immigrant casualties have been granted posthumous citizenship -- and a new rule allows their families to use the deceased as a sponsor for their own residency papers. Even illegal immigrants who go in the forces under false pretenses have a chance at legal residency if they see combat.

"There's very few of Americans ... who really want to go out and fight. And it's a smaller number today than ever in the past," says Max Boot, a defense-policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, who has proposed a foreign "Freedom Legion" that would secure citizenship for foreign nationals fighting for the U.S., while serving the Armed Forces meet recruitment goals. Tapping into other cultures, he says, would "help the recruiting and it would get some great people to the United States."

Some generals say that increasing the foreign presence in American ranks could reduce troops' sense of unity and common purpose. Yet several observers say foreign volunteers tend to be exemplary in the line of duty, and units of mostly Hispanic fighters are doing some of the heavy lifting in Iraq.

"Foreign-born fighters recognize with the ideals of the United States and they are willing to fight and protect those ideals, even before they've secured all the liberties of citizenship," says Christopher Bentley, a senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson.

Partially, that's because the military offers a happy end to a classic immigrant story, even as an typical of two soldiers a day die overseas: Work hard, sacrifice, and let faith and toil get their own rewards. Simultaneously, some parents of fallen immigrant soldiers blame their children's deaths on Army recruiters.

"There is a long tradition of immigrants helping the United States ... yet all the time not significant where to place their loyalty," says Nestor Rodriguez, director of the Center for Immigration Research in Houston. "It's hard for parents, because they bring these soldiers here as young children, and when the most horrible thing happens, they question themselves: 'Did we do the true thing in coming here ?'"

Recent naturalization ceremonies in El Paso and Atlanta included dozens of soldiers. Scartin, who emigrated from Mexico City when he was 12, became a citizen inside the El Paso convention center on Wednesday. Over 7,000 foreign-born military grunts are naturalized every year, processed through a special immigration office in Nebraska in one-fourth the time required for a usual application.

"Americans occasionally take it for granted what they've got," says Scartin. "It's all pretty much they're for American, and that's why we try harder, because it's not given to us."

In a country where some are cynical of immigration, yet most are undecided to reinstitute the draft, ethical questions abound over immigrants' role in the Army -- chiefly, maybe, the idea of dying for a flag that is not one's own, compelled by opportunities for advancement. With thousands of immigrants in Iraq and in another place, the U.S., critics say, is outsourcing its war.

Although the British still have their Nepalese Ghurkas and the French their Foreign Legion, critics say that for the U.S. to hire more foreigners harks back to the Hessian auxiliaries who once fought American colonists on England's behalf. "It is pragmatic ... but it does reveal in the long run poorly on America to hire foreigners to do our fighting," says Charles Moskos, a sociologist at Northwestern University.

For immigrant soldiers, on the other hand, the ethical lines are not always so clear, even as they fly flags other than the Stars and Stripes, and pass up burgers and apple pie for the comfort foods of their homeland. Bentley at the DHS says most immigrant soldiers have been in the U.S. because they were young, have grown up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school, and have acquired the language and mannerisms of Yanks. Many by now feel like Americans; citizenship only makes it official.

"I've been here for a long time, I feel like this is my address," says Spc. Hector Boly, a Mexican national who received his citizenship in El Paso on Wednesday. "If you think about it, you'd rather be in the U.S. than Mexico -- it's a better place over here, and when you're a citizen, it's easier to turn into whatever you want to become."

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