Honor all our vets

Opinion: November 11, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Kelly McCarthy

McClatchy-Tribune

I’m a veteran, and I want to honor all vets today, including those who are immigrants but not yet citizens.

They’ve been willing to risk their lives to defend our country even before they could call it their own. We owe them our thanks, just as we owe all vets our thanks.

Although I am a private citizen now, most of my adult life has been spent in the service of our nation.

I put in 16 years in the U.S. Air Force and an additional seven years on a joint defense project overseas as a defense contractor. I understand that all veterans have made enormous sacrifices to protect the things that we believe are truly great about our nation.

The first U.S. casualty of the war in Iraq was Marine Lance Corp. Jose Gutierrez. Gutierrez was a Guatemalan orphan who made his way to the United States to find a better life. He joined the Marines to earn money for college and to support his sister still living in Guatemala. He was not a U.S. citizen at the time of his death, yet he was willing to sacrifice his life in the pursuit of a liberty he only briefly tasted.

Immigrant soldiers like Gutierrez have fought and died in every conflict the United States has been involved in, from Lexington Green to the mountains of Afghanistan.

As of last June, 114,601 men and women born outside of the United States were serving in the military. This number makes up nearly 8 percent of the 1.4 million active-duty members of the military. Of these, more than 12 percent did not have U.S. citizenship.

Cumbersome process

Like many service people serving overseas, I fell in love and married a person from another country. When she moved to the United States with me, our immigration process was long, cumbersome and expensive. Fortunately, we were able to navigate the process successfully.

But not every immigrant military family is afforded the same luck. Many U.S. military families suffer at the hands of our broken immigration system, which forces men and women in uniform into the same predicament as millions of other Americans who have spouses, parents or children who may face deportation.

Service members who put their lives on the line for our country deserve more than our broken immigration system currently provides. Congress must enact immigration reform legislation that will keep the families of U.S. military members together while they fight for our freedom.

That should not be too much to ask this Veterans Day.

Kelly McCarthy joined the Air Force in 1985 and spent most of his adult life in the U.S. intelligence community. He has worked for the National Security Agency, NATO, the U.S. Space Command and the U.S./ Australia Joint Defense facility. He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine.