16/06/2017
Ray, here. When I was a boy of 20, I was being stupid one day and got arrested for possession of ma*****na and ma*****na paraphernalia in the suburbs of NJ. I paid fines and did a year of probation to have it expunged. In 2003, I told this to my Army recruiter and wrote it on a standard form. A year or so later, I was a specialist in the Army Field Artillery, was given a secret security clearance, and served 5 more years. Went to war and came home with a bit of PTSD and a mTBI, promoted to Sergeant and back to war. I then got out, finished college and grad school on my GI Bill, and started working to help other Veterans as a social worker and researcher.
Give them their citizenship. They are better citizens than 92.7% of the rest of the US population who never served. They deserve they same opportunity I had.
There were folks I served with who joined for the path to citizenship, and they were good soldiers and good friends. If one of them were to be deported because of a drug charge, that is a slap in the face to the veteran community. These folks are no different than you or I. All that separates us is a crumbly old piece of paper with some numbers on it, that make us legally required to give a third of our money to a system that only works for those building more weapons and keeping us at war.
In recent years, a growing number of undocumented immigrants have joined the armed forces -- only to be deported later.