the The father of a US Marine was deported in California is drawing new attention to President Donald Trump’s apparent changes to a long-standing policy that seeks to protect military families from deportation.
Trump’s new immigration tactics come after years of the military recruiting from immigrant communities to fill its ranks and touting immigration benefits to families of recruits.
Here’s what you should know.
Besides potential protection from deportation, enlisting in the military often means respect in your family’s immigration cases and better chances of obtaining a green card.
The armed forces have used these benefits to recruit more people, and as of last year, there were an estimated 40,000 people serving in the military without citizenship.
Under President Joe Biden, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has considered military service for you and your immediate family as a “significant mitigating factor” when making immigration decisions, such as removal from the country.
The idea was to boost recruitment and maintain morale, for fear that a service member’s family would take a hit if they were deported.
The administration issued a memo last February to get rid of the old approach.
She said immigration authorities “will no longer exempt” categories of people who have received more grace in the past.
That includes families of military service members or veterans, said Margaret Stock, a military expert on immigration law.
They can, but Stock said there is no explicit list of convictions that would make a person ineligible for protection and that USCIS can waive the counting of criminal convictions when making an immigration decision.
Yes. The wife of a Marine Corps veteran, who was seeking a green card, He was arrested in May In louisiana but a The judge prevented its removal.
And veterans Without nationality Increasingly Worried about deportation.
Stocks say they will.
The army has faced difficulties in the past to meet recruitment numbers.
That’s partly because there aren’t enough American citizens without immigrant family members to meet the need, said Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Military Police, U.S. Army Reserve, who taught law at West Point during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Immigration benefits for the recruit and his or her family were key to expanding the Army’s ranks, and recruiting would suffer without them, Stock said.
The Marine Corps told The Associated Press last month that recruiting officials were told they were “not the appropriate authority” to “imply that the Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.”