For men applying to become American citizens, an issue that often crops up is whether the applicant registered for Selective Service, the registration system for military-aged men so that they can be conscripted into military service if the draft is ever re-instated.
Male U.S. citizens (“USCs”) and legal permanent residents (“LPRs”) born after December 31, 1959, are required to register between the ages of 18 and 26. But it’s not only USCs and LPRs who are required to register, but also certain seasonal agricultural workers here on temporary visas, refugees and asylees, and undocumented immigrants.
So, the United States government requires not only its citizens, but also undocumented immigrants, to register for a potential draft. Being drafted would mean being forced to join the U.S. military and fight for America in time of war. The first question that pops into my mind when considering this scheme is: “Do we really want men without allegiance to the U.S. fighting in our military?” The second question is: “So, we expect undocumented immigrants, who are currently being particularly demonized and whose already limited rights are being further restricted by anti-immigrant factions, to fight and be prepared to die for the U.S.?” The third question is: “Why on earth would an undocumented immigrant, who constantly lives life under the radar of government authorities, register for Selective Service and risk deportation?”
For immigrants eligible to naturalize, which means someone with at least three years, and usually five years, of legal permanent residency, some then face the hurdle of having not registered for Selective Service when required under the law to do so. For a man who was once an undocumented immigrant but later obtains legal permanent residency, he then must under the letter of the law explain why he didn’t register for Selective Service. Most applicants didn’t realize that this requirement existed at the time that they were supposed to register, and this good faith ignorance is usually accepted as a valid excuse for failure to register. But, if the examiner decides to disbelieve the good faith ignorance excuse then this is a valid basis for denial of the naturalization application.
Should we deny a man U.S. citizenship after he has earned his legal residency; been a law-abiding member of society; and learned the basics of our history, politics, and legal system, often better than those born here, because when he was undocumented he chose not to register for Selective Service and therefore expose himself to deportation? Especially given that the purpose of Selective Service is to identify men to conscript into military service for a country for which, at the time, the applicant had so few rights that he could be held in almost indefinite “detention” (read, “imprisonment”) without the right to free legal counsel, without the protections of criminal defendants against search and seizure, and yet he was widely dubbed a “criminal” and treated as a criminal. In the balance, I feel that even a willful failure to register for military conscription for someone whose rights and options were already so limited should not be a bar to naturalization.
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