Lewis & Clark Law Review
First Page
1285
Abstract
The United States has a long history of using the foreign born to meet its mil- itary demands. For many immigrants, military service served both as a way to demonstrate loyalty to their adopted country, and to facilitate their naturali- zation process. However, over the past several decades an increasing number of foreign-born veterans have found themselves being deported, despite their honorable service, for having committed criminal acts. In many cases, these veterans were never given a chance to contest their deportations due to their status as non-citizens. This Article compares the deportation of non-citizen veterans today, with the failure by the U.S. government to grant citizenship to Asian-American military veterans in the first half of the twentieth century, as a means to explore the role of the legal system in adjudicating between two competing views regarding immigration. The first view sees immigrants as po- tential contributors to American society, and seeks to attract those deemed nec- essary, beneficial, or worthy of becoming Americans, and facilitate their so- cial/legal incorporation into the United States. The second view sees immigrants as a threat to national cohesiveness, and seeks to identify and re- move those seen as problematic or dangerous. This Article argues that despite the United States’ professed belief in the importance of patriotism for national belonging, support for granting citizenship to foreign-born veterans has fre- quently given way to broader racialized restrictionist tendencies which mani- fest explicitly and implicitly within the legal system.
Recommended Citation
Deenesh Sohoni & Yosselin Turcios,
Discarded Loyalty: The Deportation of Immigrant Veterans,
24
Lewis & Clark L. Rev.
1285
(2020).
Available at:
https://lawcommons.lclark.edu/lclr/vol24/iss4/5
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