Military Program Will Benefit Few of the Undocumented

USA Today

By Alan Gomez

September 26, 2014

Military program will benefit few of the undocumented 

Immigrants have been waiting all summer for the White House to expand the rights of millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country. This week, they got it for maybe a few hundred.

When the Department of Defense announced Thursday that it would allow a small number of undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children to serve in a specialized military program, immigrants described it as a welcome step forward. But the announcement left them with even more questions about the Obama administration's plans and disappointed that it didn't go further.

"If the president believes that this very small announcement that will only benefit a very small pool of DREAMers will silence our demands for broader administrative relief, he is wrong," said Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez of United We Dream, an immigrant rights youth organization. "It's really important that this does not become a benchmark."

A White House official emphasized, however, that the Pentagon's new policy is separate from the systemwide immigration review the White House is conducting and President Obama still intends to implement broader changes. This official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations, said the Defense Department program is not a substitute for a broader overhaul of the nation's immigration system, and that Obama still plans executive action on that front by the end of the year.

The Pentagon has been using a program known as the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest Program, or MAVNI, to recruit up to 1,500 foreigners a year with specialized language skills or specific medical expertise into the armed forces.

Since the program began in 2008, foreigners with green cards or visas could enter. On Thursday, Jessica Wright, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, issued a memo expanding that pool to include immigrants who have qualified for a program created by Obama in 2012 that allows some undocumented to register with the federal government and gain protection from any deportation proceedings for a period of two years. More than 580,000 people have qualified for the program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

No new military slots were created for those undocumented immigrants, commonly referred to as DREAMers. Instead, they will compete with immigrants holding green cards and visas for the same slots.

Immigration advocates called the new policy inadequate.

"It's really quite puzzling and quite disappointing that the Department of Defense has come out with such a limited, myopic approach to opening up enlistment for DREAMers," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a group that supports granting U.S. citizenship to the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants.

When asked why the Pentagon did not completely open up military enlistment to undocumented immigrants, Defense spokesman Lt. Cdr. Nate Christensen pointed to a 2006 law that requires U.S. citizenship or legal permanent residence for enlistment. The only exception is that the Secretary of Defense can sidestep those requirements if it is "vital to the national interest."

That's why the incremental program, and not a full opening to enlistment, "comports with the law," he said.

Further complicating the new directive is the time and difficulty undocumented immigrants will face when applying for the program.

Margaret Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and former professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, helped design the original MAVNI program and said it will take months before military recruiters are trained to consider the new candidates. She said the heightened security screenings for participants, which include immigration checks of all their immediate relatives, could also limit the pool even further.

"It's going to be problematic," she said.

The Pentagon changes also upset critics of the administration, who said it's another example of the president's attempt to "recruit illegal immigrants" at a time when military personnel are facing layoffs and American workers still face high unemployment.

"With an unprecedented illegal immigration crisis raging, the president announces not enforcement actions to reduce illegality, but yet one more in an endless series of executive actions to further undermine immigration law," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., in a statement. "Once more, he has taken unilateral executive actions that signals to the world that our borders are not being enforced."

What's left is a group of undocumented immigrants only slightly encouraged by the new proposal and unsure of their prospects for it. Hina Naveed, a 24-year-old Pakistan native who speaks Urdu, said she would likely qualify for the program given that she's been granted DACA protections and fits their specialized criteria. But since it is so limited and does not affect so many of her friends who also want to join the military, she is left with "mixed emotions."

"At this point, I'm going to refuse to enlist until my fellow DACA recipients have the same opportunity I do," she said.

For  more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com