ARMY/MILITARY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “One weekend a month, Kyungmin Cho, a 20-year-old sophomore at Temple University and aspiring Army recruit, makes the two-hour drive to an Army base in New Jersey, dons a uniform and recites the U.S. Army Soldier’s Creed…
Pvt. Cho, in fact, isn’t exactly an American soldier. He is an undocumented immigrant who has lived in the U.S. since he was 8 years old. Due to restrictions on his activity, reciting the military oath is one of the few things left to him when he shows up to fulfill the six-year commitment he made to serve in the U.S. armed forces.
Aspiring soldiers like Pvt. Cho once had a path to citizenship through the military. But the Trump administration announced in September that the immigration program known as DACA—Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals —would be phased out by March, and with that, the future of DACA recipients in the military became uncertain…
Nearly 16,000 people in the military are directly affected by the changes ordered by Mr. Trump, posing a challenge to military recruitment and tension within the ranks. Top commanders have moved to reassure affected service members while trying to channel the presidential orders into a manageable process…
But even if DACA recipients and transgender people ultimately are permitted to keep serving, the effects of abrupt changes in their eligibility will linger, some military officials fear.”
-Nancy A. Youssef, “A Trump-Era Military Dilemma: Enlisted, but Unwelcome,” The Wall Street Journal online, Jan. 2, 2018 09:18am