Trump must honor the Immigrant & Undocumented Veterans of American Foreign Wars

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2016/02/trump-must-honor-the-immigrants-undocumented-veterans-of-american-foreign-wars.html

Trump must honor the Immigrant & Undocumented Veterans of American Foreign Wars
By Juan Cole | Feb. 23, 2016

Donald Trump, the ultimate chickenhawk, pretends to be a big booster of veterans, but as far as I can tell he’s never done anything in particular for them. Worse, Trump has been deeply offensive toward a significant group of vets– immigrants and the undocumented.

In 2009, there were 100,000 foreign-born individuals serving in the US military. And in 2009 there were hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which they served. Some 12% of them, i.e. 12,000 people, were not citizens. Many green card holders joined up in order to get citizenship (which was automatic if they fought in a war zone), and many of those young men had undocumented spouses or relatives. Some undocumented US residents managed to get into the military. Some of they undocumented almost certainly died fighting for their adopted country, even if they had no proper papers.

Five percent of the US officer corps is Latino, and Latinos typically made up 12.2% of service personnel after 9/11 (they are 17% of the US population).

Sometimes when a Latino servicemen was killed, his wife was denied benefits because she was undocumented. President Obama had intended that a small number of undocumented Americans brought to this country illegally as children, known as Dreamers, would be eligible for military service, but this provision was blocked by the Republicans in Congress.

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/11796588