Iraq vet gets deal in passport case
A few of you sent me a link the other day about Elisha L. Dawkins, an Army veteran and currently a Navy Petty Officer who was arrested for checking the wrong box on a passport application. I figured there was more to the story than what was being reported and I was right (New York Times link);
Petty Officer Dawkins was brought to the United States from the Bahamas as a baby and was raised in Miami believing he was a United States citizen, said his lawyer, Clark Mervis.
He was indicted in Miami while he was stationed at Guantanamo and arrested soon after his return for falsely checking a box on his passport application that wrongly stated he hadn’t applied for a passport in the past. Now it seems he was, unknown to him, an illegal alien as well.
But the prosecutor has taken into account that he served in the Army in Iraq and holds a security clearance with the Navy and offered him a term of probation in exchange for dropping the charges.
Of course, ICE, who won’t deport regular illegal aliens who haven’t done a thing for this country, is being a bureaucratic dick;
Dani Bennett, a spokeswoman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said on Tuesday that Petty Officer Dawkins did not have an immigration hold on him, meaning he would be free to leave the federal detention center if he agreed to the pretrial diversion program. Once his criminal case is resolved, he will have to fight a separate battle to sort out his immigration status.
Category: Illegal Immigrants, Military issues
Pathetic!
I thought there might be more to the story…
It tells you where the priorities are. Had he been sitting on his ass not doing a damned thing, he’d have been fine. But since he actually EARNED his citizenship (which at least four years in the military does) he gets this shit. Un-fucking-believable
Illegal immigrants who complete an honorable period of service in the military during wartime are eligible for citizenship.
They’re still technically ineligible to enlist in the first place but if they do get in somehow, they can get citizenship.
If he was an illegal, how was he able to enlist? Don’t you have to have a green card to enlist, if you aren’t already a citizen?
Hell, if he was illegal how’d he get a clearance? Sure it was “just” a secret, but seriously.
Spade–tells you all you need to know about the screening process if he in fact did get one. And FWIW, it’s not as if phony docs are hard to come by. Hell, even legit ones can be had if “the originals were lost”. Anyone who has been in recruiting can tell horror stories about how many phony docs they’ll run into over the course of a tour.
This is the kind of guy who needs to go to the front of the line and be granted citizenship, not the fucksticks who Obama wants to give amnesty to. And yes, it’s amnesty, no matter how you spin it. This guy, OTOH, EARNED the right to be here.
“Once his criminal case is resolved, he will have to fight a separate battle to sort out his immigration status.
”
there is no sorting that needs to be done; he earned it, period, end of story.
What a slap in the face to this veteran, when illegals blatantly protest out in public over just immigration laws and statutes.
This is exactly what the DREAM Act would do for illegals. My question remains: if you are an illegal alien, how do you enlist in the US military? I thought you had to have a Green Card to do so…
Problem is, Ladybug, it’s ALL illegals, not just those who came here to young to know differently and who all along thought they were in fact here legally.
Bit of a difference between having your parents bring you over when you’re a toddler as opposed to a teen or an adult coming here and DEMANDING citizenship simply for residing here, albeit illegally.
” My question remains: if you are an illegal alien, how do you enlist in the US military?”
Not all recruiters are honorable. And like this guy, not all illegal immigrants know they’re here illegally.
“Once his criminal case is resolved, he will have to fight a separate battle to sort out his immigration status.”
It shouldn’t be that much of a battle, absent some evidence of intentional fraud (and I don’t see anyone arguing that). 8 U.S.C. §1440 specifically states that if you serve honorably in the military in a designated period of hostility (we’ve been in one since 9/11), you are exempt from the usual prerequisites for naturalization, e.g. being here legally.
#12: Even if the guy had a sketch recruiter, that still doesn’t explain how he was able to obtain a security clearance. If the guy is illegal, and he was able to obtain a Secret or Top Secret clearance, it sounds like someone else should be in trouble for checking the wrong boxes on a form.
I’m confused. If he’s a Petty Officer 3rd class, why is he wearing Army Specialist rank in that photo? You can’t claim that ACU PO3 rank isn’t available either because one of my subordinates here in Iraq is a PO3…and he has the velcro patches.
He was in the Army when he was in Iraq and he’s in the Navy now.
I’m not saying that this is the case, just speculating, but since HE didn’t know he was here illegally, it’s altogether possible that his mother (or father, or both) had a phony birth certificate for him. He couldn’t have gotten all the way through school, through doctor’s visits, through any part-time hobs, gotten a driver’s license, and enlisted without sometime having to show a birth certificate.
[…] difference ideology makes July 1st, 2011 Remember yesterday that I wrote about Elisha L. Dawkins, an Army Iraq veteran and currently a Navy Petty Officer who was arrested for checking the wrong […]