trying to grok

Interesting story. I knew about the Mexicans and Filipinos but wasn't aware there were other nationals too.

I actually have that article printed out in German (it's a DPA article: Deutsche Presse Agentur), sitting on my desk right now. A friend gave it to me a few weeks ago. He read the article and was trying to tell me that the US was getting foreign mercenaries to fight in the war in exchange for money and citizenship. I told him that the military wasn't in the immigration business, and won't help people immigrate into the States. Only those who ALREADY have green cards (which is life time residency, and very difficult to get; citizenship with a green card is pretty simple, wait 5 years, do a few classes) may join the military, and the only benefit, in addition to monetary benefits, to joining as a non-citizen, is that you can become a US citizen after 2 years military service instead of the normal 5 years of uninterrupted residency. The article is interesting, but I don't like the fact that it twists the fact and calls them mercenaries.

Oh, and another interesting detail: the German article I read ended with the 6th paragraph, it never went to talk about how he was proud to go fight, and he felt American. Nope, in the German article, it just talked about them being foreigners....absolutely no idea about what it means to be an American....sooo angry right now.

Oh, BTW, I am also a Green Card carrying non-citizen who considers herself American...so there!

That's total BS that the German article ended early! Also, I too was skeptical about how "easy" they made it sound, like when the German guy said you can automatically get citizenship after the deployment. I meant to look into that; thanks for providing me with some more information.