Citizenship for Soldiers in Death, Sometimes
In an overview piece, Helen O'Neill of the Associated Press discussed the 100-plus foreign born U.S. military members who earned U.S. citizenship by dying in Iraq.
According to the article, of the tens of thousands of foreign-born members in the U.S. armed forces, more than 20,000 are not U.S. citizens, although many have been naturalized. Families must formally apply for citizenship within two years of the soldier's death (although not all choose to do so), and only since 2003 does a grant of citizenship to a deceased solder allow surviving parents and spouses to also apply for citizenship.
"'There is something terribly wrong with our immigration policies if it takes death on the battlefield in order to earn citizenship,' Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles wrote to President Bush in April 2003. He urged the president to grant immediate citizenship to all immigrants who sign up for military service in wartime," she reported.
Under an executive order signed by President Bush in July 2002, "green card" soldiers may apply for citizenship as soon as they enlist, instead of the three years legal residents had been required to wait.