Great Article on Non-Citizen Soldiers

[redman]

The following editorials appeared in the Friday, April 4 edition of the Wall Street Journal. It is, at the same time, a sad yet very powerful story and serves well as a reminder that there are still people who hold the American Dream to be true. As follows:

COMMENTARY

Jose Antonio Gutierrez

By BRENDAN MINITER

One of the first U.S. soldiers to die in Iraq was not an American citizen. He'd come here illegally as a teenager. His name was Jose Antonio Gutierrez. He was killed on March 21 by enemy fire while trying to secure Umm Qasr, a port vital for humanitarian aid. He was a 22-year-old lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps.

It's easy to discount talk of the American dream as hyperbole, a cliche carelessly tossed about. But then there are people like Gutierrez, whose whole life proved that the naysayers were wrong. It is possible to escape the oppression of your circumstances. It's no coincidence that he joined the Marines, whose motto is "semper fidelis." Gutierrez remained always faithful to the dream that inspires the best within us. And for this he is an American hero.

Gutierrez was born in Guatemala, but he told his American foster family only an outline of his life there. It's easy to see the pain in the omitted text. His mother died when he was three. Five years later his father was dead. He left school to work a series of odd jobs to buy food for himself and his sister, Engracia. He learned about the U.S. from an American aid worker at a shelter.

Then "the mentor left," explains Lillian Cardenas -- one of his foster sisters -- so Gutierrez decided to head for America by stowing away on freight trains. He got stuck in Mexico for a couple of years, crossing into California when he was 14. He was determined to see Los Angeles. Somehow he ended up in Hollywood.

He slept on park benches and got food from a shelter. An alert social worker enrolled him in a program that helped him gain legal residency and placed him with a foster family. The first placement didn't work out. Neither did the second or the third. Finally in 2000, he came to live with Nora and Marcelo Mosquera (themselves immigrants from Costa Rica and Ecuador).

The Mosqueras have three "biological" children, but have cared for more than two dozen foster children over the years, some of whom they've adopted. They never adopted Gutierrez, but on Mother's Day last year he wrote home and "formally" asked if he could call them mom and dad.

He never forgot Engracia, often calling or sending her money. But he reached new heights with the Mosqueras. They pressured him to learn English (in frustration he'd say he just wanted to learn enough "to get by"). He had a strong faith in God and would urge his siblings to go to church -- they were all Catholic. He was a private person, but would jokingly tell the family that someday "people will know my name." After high school he was recruited to play soccer for nearby Harbor College. There he began studying architecture.

Gutierrez loved America and talked about giving something back by enlisting in the Army. A few months after Sept. 11, he surprised everyone by announcing he'd joined the Marines. The Army recruiter just wasn't as convincing, he told them. After he graduated from Parris Island in March 2002, the Marines became another family for him.

"You always had to take the big car when you picked up José," Mrs. Cardenas recalls. "I have a little Acura, and once drove it the 90 minutes to Camp Pendleton to pick him up," she said, chuckling. He was waiting there with five buddies. "Honestly, I have to tell you that you're not all going to fit." Sometimes he'd show up for dinner with as many as 30 Marines. "There were Marines everywhere," she said, but they were all welcome. "Whenever you'd have him around, you didn't have a worry in the world."

He knew the danger that awaited him in the Gulf. Before leaving, he asked his foster family to take care of Engracia. "You're her family now," he said. But Mrs. Cardenas also remembers why he was willing to go to war. "From what I've seen," Saddam has to be confronted, he told them. "It's my job. It's also my duty."

Gutierrez, along with Jose Angel Garibay -- a Marine killed on March 23 battling for Nasiriyah -- has now been awarded citizenship posthumously.

Immigrant Soldiers

Two Marines killed in Iraq have now been awarded citizenship posthumously. Surprised that foreign nationals are serving in the U.S. military, and even doing the fighting and the dying? You shouldn't be.

Jose Gutierrez of Guatemala (profiled here) and Jose Angel Garibay of Mexico, both from the Los Angeles area, were killed in the opening days of the war. Shortly before his death, Corporal Garibay wrote a letter to a former high school teacher explaining why he was willing to go to war: "I want to defend the country I plan to become a citizen of."

The Marines have a number of foreign nationals in their ranks. Out of a force of 175,000, 7,331 are not yet citizens of the United States and 5,416 became citizens after enlisting. Hispanics are by far the largest group -- 3,472 of the non-citizen Marines.

Defense officials estimate there are 31,000 foreign nationals serving in all the service branches, many of whom are now fighting in the Gulf. And while polls say 80% of Mexicans do not support this war, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City has been swamped with hundreds of requests to enlist in the U.S. military. Even as American casualties are coming home, there are plenty of would-be Americans who'd be more than happy to join the fight for our national security if it means they'd have a chance at living better lives afterward.

On July 4 last year President Bush signed an executive order expediting citizen applications for non-Americans serving in the military as of September 11, 2001. He might want to repeat his order this coming July 4, after the liberation of Iraq.