New York Times
By Julia Preston
May 31, 2014
A
Pentagon plan to allow a small number of young immigrants who grew up
in the United States without legal status to enlist in the military has
been delayed by the White
House, senior officials there said Saturday, to avoid any conflict with
House Republicans considering whether to move on immigration
legislation.
The Pentagon proposal would create a first but very limited pathway to citizenship for those who call themselves Dreamers.
In
a letter to a number of senators that was drafted Wednesday, Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel said he had “taken initial action to allow for the
enlistment” of the young
immigrants.
But
the White House asked Mr. Hagel to hold off taking any further steps on
the new policy until August, after Congress’s summer session, the
administration officials
said.
President
Obama said last week that he would not take any executive action on
immigration during the next two months, to give Republican leaders in
the House a chance
to move forward on legislation that could grant legal status to illegal
immigrants.
Mr.
Hagel also received swift and critical responses from several senators,
including Richard Durbin of Illinois, the second-highest-ranking
Democrat in the Senate and
a leading proponent of legislation to give citizenship to undocumented
youths, which is known as the Dream Act. Mr. Durbin urged Mr. Hagel to
allow enlistment of a much broader group of those youths.
To
be eligible under the new Pentagon policy, young immigrants would have
to have deportation deferrals under a program Mr. Obama started in 2012,
known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Mr. Hagel said those youths would be allowed to
apply to enlist under a separate Defense Department program for certain
temporary immigrants who have special medical or language skills.
Legal
experts and immigrant leaders said the new Pentagon policy would
provide at best only a very narrow path to citizenship, with perhaps no
more than a handful of youths
qualifying. More than 550,000 young immigrants have received
deportation deferrals.
But
White House officials said the president did not want any action from
the executive branch that might rile Republicans during the period when
they might hold votes
on immigration measures. Republican leaders have accused Mr. Obama of
overreaching his constitutional authority with some executive measures,
including the deferred action initiative. Mr. Obama also asked Jeh C.
Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security,
to postpone action on a deportations review he has conducted.
“These
are both modest steps, neither of which we are taking at this time,”
said Cecilia Muñoz, the White House domestic policy adviser. “We will
reassess once we see
what Congress does or doesn’t do.”
She
added: “The president is convinced there is a legislative opportunity,
and that gives us the best chance to fix what is broken in our
immigration system. He wants
to leave no stone unturned to let the House do what it should do.”
The
youths would apply under an existing Defense Department program called
Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest, known by its
acronym, Mavni, which currently
allows immigrants with certain temporary visas to enlist if they are
doctors or have other advanced medical skills, or if they speak
strategic languages including Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, and a number of
African languages. The new policy would add youths with
deportation deferrals to the list of those who could join the military
under that program.
The
Pentagon program offers an expedited path to naturalization for
immigrant recruits, who can become citizens in as few as three months.
Generally immigrants who are
not legal permanent residents with green cards cannot enlist. Youths
with deportation deferrals do not have any resident status.
But
the current program has an annual quota of 1,500 places, and already is
struggling with backlogs. In addition, very few immigrant youths would
have the medical skills
or speak the languages required for the program.
Margaret
Stock, an immigration lawyer in Alaska who helped to create the
immigrant enlistment program when she was an officer in the Army
Reserve, said it was unclear
that any of the youths would qualify for enlistment under the current
terms of the Pentagon program. A more important obstacle, she said, was
that they have to pass a stringent background check. Having been in the
United States for any period of time without
immigration papers has been a disqualifying factor for that
investigation.
Cesar
Vargas, a leader of the Dream Action Coalition, a youth group, who has
been pressing the Pentagon to allow young immigrants to enlist, said he
was heartened that
Mr. Hagel had taken action, but was disappointed by the limited scope
of the plan. “This policy does not fully tap into the great potential of
Dreamers who want to serve this country in uniform,” he said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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