By right of service: the military as a pathway to earned citizenship

Abstract

In this article, I use the civic republican tradition as a theoretical lens to examine how Mexican-Americans in a transnational community have drawn on their wartime service to demand equal treatment as citizens and legal residence as immigrants. I interpret this account through a frame of “Tejano republicanism” originating in the historical experience of civil rights groups led by South Texas veterans. Originating as Texas-based US citizen-only groups, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American G.I. Forum's struggle for equal rights evolved to include a broader nationwide pan-Latino constituency including unauthorized immigrants by the 1970s. Today, both groups support military service as a pathway to citizenship for all unauthorized immigrants in the spirit of their founding generation's struggle for civil rights. But unauthorized immigrants who want to follow this pathway to citizenship can no longer do so, as they are barred from enlisting. To respond to this new challenge, I apply my historical and normative account of earned citizenship to analyze and critique current US policies governing immigrant enlistment and the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act's military service provision. As a whole, this article serves as a work of applied political theory with implications for the contemporary US immigration reform debate.