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The military gates to US citizenship: Latina/o “aliens and non-citizen nationals” and military work

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Abstract

This article examines the formation of a contemporary US federal statute (8 U.S.C. §1440) that allows the granting of citizenship to non-citizens in military active duty, including migrants who did not adhere to terms of their visas, or entered the United States without formal authorization. While the actual language of the statute dates back to 1952, its origins are in the Civil War. It is a de facto form of amnesty but one that is generally excluded in contemporary debates about comprehensive immigration reform, DREAM Act proposals, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. The essay contextualizes the statute within the long-standing and widespread forms of amnesty deployed in the United States, and explores the political process of inclusion through exclusion.

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Notes

  1. The label “informally authorized” migrant is suggested as an alternative to “illegal/undocumented” migrant (see Plascencia, 2009).

  2. Law scholar Linda Bosniak recently articulated an insightful and important political and philosophical alternative that grounds amnesty as an act of vindication (Bosniak, 2012, 2013).

  3. It should be noted that there are two related statutes: §1439 and §1440. The former is considered the “peace” time provision and the latter the war provision.

  4. All US citizens are US nationals, but a small number, such as those born in American Samoa, are US nationals but not citizens.

  5. The insightful scholarship of Stevens (2011) on the unlawful detention and removal of US citizens underscores that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement does remove citizens.

  6. For earlier works that raise the tribute/bounty issue, see Wong and Cho (2006), Wong (2007) and Malfatti-Rachell (2008).

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Further Reading

  • 1862 Act, 12 Statute 594, 17 July.

  • 1926 Act, 44 Statute 654, 26 May.

  • 1940 Nationality Act, 54 Statute 1137, 14 October.

  • 1944 Act, 58 Statute 886, 22 December.

  • 1948 Act, 62 Statute 281, 1 June.

  • 1952 Act, 66 Statute 163, 27 June.

  • 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, 100 Statute 3359, 6 November.

  • Aliens and Nationality, 8 U. S. Code §1440.

  • S. 744, 113th Congress, 1st Session, 27 June 2013.

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Plascencia, L. The military gates to US citizenship: Latina/o “aliens and non-citizen nationals” and military work. Lat Stud 13, 162–184 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2015.11

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