military | Multicultural Meanderings

Proposed bill would allow undocumented immigrants to serve in military for citizenship | ABC10.com

2017/01/09 Leave a comment

The US has long had a process for immigrants to join the military and then have a pathway to citizenship. C-24 included a similar provision. This proposal takes it one step further:

A proposed bill would allow qualified young undocumented immigrants to serve in the military and earn citizenship in the United States.

U.S. Representative Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) re-introduced the Encourage New Legalized Immigrants to Start Training Act (ENLIST Act) this week.

The measure applies only to undocumented immigrants who were under the age of 15 when they were brought to the U.S. by their parents prior to 2012.

The ENLIST Act doesn’t guarantee children of undocumented immigrants would be accepted into the military. Applicants still have to meet strict military requirements including speaking English, passing a background check and having a high school diploma.

Denham first introduced the ENLIST Act in 2013. He served with many immigrants during his 16 years in the Air Force where he participated in Operations Desert Storm and Restore Hope.

Denham told ABC10, his history of serving in the military is one of the reasons which inspired the ENLIST Act. He stressed the importance of acknowledging immigrants’ long time role in the U.S. military.

“We have a history over the course of our country,” Denham said.

The congressman also said he’s pushing for immigration reform because the U.S. needs an overall immigration solution to the broken system.

“We need to have a broader discussion about Dreamers,” Denham said in reference to undocumented immigrants who arrived to the U.S. as children and assimilated into American culture, as well as attended U.S. schools.

Denham explained the need to address what happens to this group after high school. While some may advocate for sending children of undocumented immigrants back to their country of origin, the congressman said the U.S. is the only country this group knows.

Source: Proposed bill would allow undocumented immigrants to serve in military for citizenship | ABC10.com

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with military, USA

Iran’s Surprising New Foreign Legion

2015/09/03 Leave a comment

Ironic. Follows US approach of granting preference to those who serve in the military, which Canada also adopted in the 2014 Citizenship Act changes:

Proposed amendments to Iran’s Civil Code under the name “Facilitating Naturalization of non-Iranian Veterans, Warriors and Elites” will offer citizenship to foreigners who join Iranian military units—be it border patrol, militias confronting the so-called “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria, groups involved with public order operations, or any of Iran’s less “official” military initiatives, including support for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Under the amendments, “revolutionary heroes” can become citizens without undergoing existing naturalization requirements.

Parliamentarians who signed the bill say those who “serve the revolution,” including people who have contributed to Iran’s scientific progress, will be entitled to easier access to the citizenship they deserve. Yet human-rights activists and lawyers say the amendments are part of a political and militaristic strategy to entice immigrants, who have resided illegally in the country since 1979, into fighting Iran’s proxy wars.

If passed, the amendment to Article 980 will allow a new working group—the Committee for Granting Naturalization to non-Iranian Veterans, Warriors and Elites—to decide if a non-Iranian “revolutionary” will be granted Iranian citizenship. The MPs who tabled the bill on January 12 include several conservative parliamentarians who are currently waiting for their amendment to be reviewed.

Who does this new law affect and what is it really trying to achieve?

“After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan [in 1979], the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran opened its doors to Afghans, arguing that Islam does not recognize any borders,” explains Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human-rights lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace laureate. “At that time, around 4 million Afghans came to Iran, but only around 10 percent of them managed to obtain residency permits.” The rest, she explains, remained illegally, and were thus denied basic rights which citizens enjoy. “At that time,” Ebadi continues, “Iran had begun an eight-year war with Iraq and was naturally in need of inexpensive labor. Iran took advantage of illegal Afghan workers to satisfy this need.” But when the war ended, the policy remained.

Source: Iran’s Surprising New Foreign Legion – The Daily Beast

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with Iran, military

Why Are Only Three Observant Sikh Men Serving In The U.S. Military? : NPR

2015/06/09 Leave a comment

Interesting. US appears to be the exception, given Canada, UK and India all allow:

If a Muslim woman may wear a headscarf at work, as the U.S. Supreme Court has now affirmed, perhaps a Sikh man should be able to wear a turban while serving in the U.S. military.

So argues the Sikh Coalition, an advocacy organization that has long opposed a Pentagon ban on facial hair and religious headgear among service members. That campaign got at least a moral boost with this week’s court decision.

“What I’m anticipating with this decision is that we will have a move in this country to recognize the right of individuals from different religious backgrounds to live in an America that does not discriminate against them on the basis of how they appear,” says Simran Jeet Singh, the senior religion fellow for the Sikh Coalition.

As a general rule, the Department of Defense prohibits facial hair and the wearing of religious headgear among service members, though it offers “accommodation” on a case-by-case basis in recognition of “sincerely held beliefs.”

Such waivers, however, are given only when they would not undermine “military readiness, unit cohesion, good order, discipline, health and safety, or any other military requirement.”

In practice, those considerations can present major obstacles. Currently, just three observant Sikh men serve in the U.S. military, all in the Army, and all are in noncombat positions. That’s out of an active-duty military force of 1.4 million.

…Sikh men are currently allowed to serve with beards and turbans in the military services in Canada, the United Kingdom and India, among other countries, and they were permitted in the U.S. military until the early 1980s, when the policy was changed.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 1986 decision, upheld the military’s right to ban facial hair and religious headgear, finding that the military is a “specialized society separate from civilian society” and that to “accomplish its mission the military must foster instinctive obedience, unity, commitment and esprit de corps.”

That ruling would suggest that this week’s court decision upholding the right of a Muslim woman to wear her hijab headscarf does not apply to observant Sikh men wishing to wear a turban in the U.S. military, but it may nonetheless hold some political significance.

“The military has shown on many occasions that it is influenced by the court of public opinion and by social change,” says Eugene Fidell, a specialist in military law at the Yale Law School.

Why Are Only Three Observant Sikh Men Serving In The U.S. Military? : NPR.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with military, Sikhs, USA

Ottawa spends more on military history amid criticism over support for veterans

2014/06/20 Leave a comment

Seems a bit of a unidimensional celebration of Canada’s history in the lead-up to 2017:

The commemorative budget includes roughly $32-million for the Department of National Defence over seven years and nearly $50-million over three years at the Departments of Veterans Affairs for public education, ceremonies, events and remembrance partnerships, according to figures compiled by The Globe and Mail. The budget also includes several million dollars through the Department of Canadian Heritage, the figures show.

This funding is not a complete tally and is in addition to the tens of millions of dollars the Conservatives already dedicated to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, the conflict with the United States the government billed as “The Fight for Canada.”

National Defence has created a special program called “Operation Distinction” to oversee a spate of commemorations, chiefly important anniversaries of the First World War and Second World War. The initiative spans all the way to 2020, which will mark the 75th anniversary of the Second World War’s Victory in Europe Day and Victory over Japan Day.

Ottawa wants to use these occasions to build a “greater understanding that Canada’s development as an independent country with a unique identity stems in significant part from its achievement in times of war,” according to a January 2014 memo from Chief of the Defence Staff General Tom Lawson obtained under access-to-information law.

The government has made boosting appreciation of Canada’s military tradition a priority, in part to fashion a more conservative national identity. It’s cultivated an image as pro-military since taking power but in recent years has alienated a vocal group of veterans and their families, upset over what they consider insufficient federal support.

Ottawa spends more on military history amid criticism over support for veterans – The Globe and Mail.

And:

Return to old-style uniform insignia costs Canadian Forces millions

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with Canadian history, DND, military, PCH