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Deportation of a US Marine’s father California drawing new attention to the president donald trumpAn apparent change to the long-standing policy of protecting military families from deportation.
Trump’s new immigration strategy comes after the military spent years recruiting from immigrant communities to fill its ranks and touting immigration benefits for the families of those recruited.
Here’s what to know.
What was the policy?
Along with potential protection from deportation, joining the military often means respect in your family’s immigration cases and a better chance for a green card.
Those benefits were used by the armed forces to recruit more people, and, as of last year, an estimated 40,000 people without citizenship were serving in the military.
under the President Joe BidenU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement considers your and your immediate family’s military service as a “significant mitigating factor” when making immigration decisions such as removal from the country.
The idea was to boost recruitment and maintain morale, out of fear that a service member’s family might be harmed if they were deported.
What did the Trump administration change?
The administration issued a memorandum in February eliminating the old approach.
It says immigration officials will “no longer grant exemptions” to categories of people who were granted greater indulgence in the past.
This included families of service members or veterans, said Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.
Do protections end for certain crimes?
They can do so, but Stock said there is no clear list of convictions that would make someone ineligible for protection and that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services may waive the possibility of including criminal convictions in making immigration decisions.
Have families of other military members been detained?
Yes. The wife of a Marine Corps veteran who was seeking a green card was detained in Louisiana in May, but a judge blocked her removal.
And stateless veterans are increasingly worried about deportation.
Will this affect recruitment in the US armed forces?
Stock says it will.
The Army has struggled in the past to meet recruitment numbers.
That’s partly because there aren’t enough U.S. citizens without immigrant family members to meet the need, said Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, the military police, who taught law. west point George W. During the presidency of Bush and Barack Obama,
Immigration benefits for a recruit and their family were key to expanding the Army’s ranks, Stock said, and recruiting would suffer without them.
The Marine Corps told The Associated Press last month that recruiters were told they were “not the appropriate authority” meaning “the Marine Corps cannot secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.”