The Fast Track

By MARK THOMPSON

When President Bush visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center last week to witness three U.S. soldiers seriously wounded in Iraq become U.S. citizens, he said that "if somebody's willing to risk their lives for our country, they ought to be full participants in our country." It was an executive order signed by Bush four years ago that allowed this trio, and 35,000 like them, to petition for U.S. citizenship as soon as they donned a U.S. military uniform, instead of waiting the customary three years. So far, 26,000 of them have achieved that goal. Since 9/11, the government has also waived the $330 application fee for active-duty troops and allows the troops to take the oath of citizenship outside the U.S., as 176 did on July 4th in Afghanistan and Iraq. Given the way the wars in those places are going, a speedy, cut-rate route to U.S. citizenship is could be another enticement to keep fresh troops flowing to the war zone.

Non-citizens have served in the U.S. military since the War of 1812. They made up as much as 20% of the Union Army in the Civil War, and served in both world wars. These days, more of them complete their initial enlistment -- 80%, compared to 70% for citizens -- saving the Pentagon millions in training costs. More than 20% of the nation's Medal of Honor winners have been non-citizens, and three of the last five chairmen of the Joint Chiefs -- the nation's top military officer -- have been immigrants or the sons of immigrants. Emilio Gonzalez, head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, says he lacks "the eloquence to accurately describe the emotion I feel when signing a posthumous naturalization certificate." He has signed 75 of them for immigrant-soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq (26 other non-citizens also have died in combat; their families have up to two years to seek posthumous citizenship for them).

President Bush watched Gonzalez, himself an immigrant Army vet, swear in the three new soldier-citizens last week. Specialist Sergio Lopez, originally from Mexico City, moved to Bolingbrook, Ill., in 1998, and joined the Army in 2003. "He put his life on the line each day driving between observation posts and his unit's forward operating base in the Baghdad area," Bush said at the ceremony. Ten days into his second tour of Iraq in January, Lopez, 24, lost both of his legs to a roadside bomb. "There's no better way to prove that you want to be a part of this country than to serve overseas in a combat zone," Lopez tells Time. "People always talk about the immigration problem, but we can show we bring good to the country, too." Immigration advocates see no problem as the number of non-native troops rises. "They want to serve the country," says Michele Waslin of the National Council of La Raza, a leading Hispanic advocacy group. "They want the benefits that the military offers them."

Be it patriotism or the easier path to citizenship, the number of immigrants serving in the military has surged four-fold since 9/11, and is now about 2% of the force. There's even discussion of plucking foreign recruits for the U.S. military even before they've left their homeland. Kevin Ryan, a retired Army brigadier general now at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, raised some Pentagon eyebrows last week when he suggested the U.S. Army open a recruiting station in India's capital, Delhi. By tapping into non-citizens eager to wear a U.S. Army uniform, he wrote in a column in the Christian Science Monitor, last year's shortfall of 7,000 Army recruits would evaporate. "Instead of sitting back and waiting for these people to trickle in," he says, "we could go out and find the ones we want." The Army says it's interested in the idea. "It has great promise," says Major General Sean Byrne, the Army's director of military-personnel policy. "We need to pursue it."

Such debates don't concern Lopez, who expects to spend another two months recuperating before heading home to Illinois. He and his wife share a small suite in the Fisher House on Walter Reed's grounds with their two daughters. Sasha, 2, and Sofia, born on July 13, are both Americans having been born on U.S. soil. "It was a little bit easier," their Dad says, "for them to become citizens."