Filipino in U.S. Navy Challenges Reagan Decree as He Seeks Citizenship

Five years after the invasion of Grenada, the U.S. military venture on the tiny Caribbean island has stirred a new controversy pitting two unlikely opponents--a group of American servicemen and the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service--against each other in a federal court battle.

The White House inadvertently began the dispute on Feb. 2, 1987, when President Reagan signed what was then considered an innocuous executive order extending immediate citizenship to those aliens on active duty in the U.S. armed forces who served honorably in the Grenada campaign. In the order, Reagan formally designated Oct. 25 to Nov. 2, 1983, as a period of hostilities with a foreign force.

Written with the assistance of INS attorneys, the order affected permanent resident aliens and Filipino nationals.

As a part of the agreement negotiated in the early 1950s between the United States and Filipino governments that allows U.S. military bases in the Philippines, Filipinos are allowed to enlist in the U.S. Navy in their homeland without first obtaining permanent residency status. Permanent resident aliens are allowed to enlist in all branches of the U.S. armed services.

The Navy is the only branch of the U.S. armed forces authorized to recruit foreign nationals, and the only foreigners it can recruit are Filipinos. An obscure part of the immigration code extends citizenship to Filipino sailors--without requiring them to first obtain permanent residency visas--if they serve on active duty when the president declares a period of hostilities.

But what started out early last year as a good-will gesture from a grateful Executive Branch soon erupted into controversy and a federal lawsuit when a Filipino sailor who did not serve in Grenada applied for immediate citizenship. The Reagan Administration hoped to limit the offer of citizenship to those aliens who saw action in Grenada.

Sailor Based in San Diego

However, San Diego-based Navy electricians mate Arthur E. Reyes filed his application based on the assumption that Reagan’s executive order automatically qualified for citizenship all Filipino sailors who were in the service at the time.

Reyes was assigned to a submarine tender docked in San Diego during the Grenada campaign and was among a group of Filipino sailors who did not serve in Grenada but submitted applications to the INS anyway. Like the others, Reyes’ petition was routinely rejected by immigration officials.

Reyes, 29, a 7 1/2-year veteran, filed on Oct. 7, 1987, and an INS examiner determined that he was not eligible for citizenship under the executive order because he did not serve in Grenada. The president’s order, said INS officials, covered only aliens who served in the campaign.

Undeterred, Reyes, a law school graduate, sued. After researching the immigration statute that prescribes the legal requirements that Filipino sailors have to meet before being naturalized, Reyes determined that Reagan has the authority to declare a period of hostilities but not to place a geographic limitation on it.

Experts in immigration law agree with Reyes’ interpretation of the immigration statute. The law’s legislative history--which has covered WWI, WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War--has never allowed the president or Congress to limit eligibility based on place of service, said the experts. In 1968, Congress specifically rejected the notion of attaching a geographic limitation to the law.

Under that interpretation, for example, thousands of Filipino sailors who never set foot in Vietnam or sailed off its coast obtained citizenship during the Vietnam War, which officially covered the period between Feb. 28, 1961, to Oct. 15, 1978. They became naturalized solely because they were on active duty and served honorably during that period.

Carl Shusterman, a former INS prosecutor who is now in private practice in Los Angeles, said that the INS does not have “a legal foot to stand on” in opposing Reyes’ lawsuit.

“I don’t have any doubt that Mr. Reyes will prevail . . . This is a slam-dunk case. I don’t see grounds for a government argument unless they turn around and say that Reagan’s order is really void,” said Shusterman.

Shusterman noted that the Vietnam War ended in 1975, with the fall of Saigon, but the period of hostilities was officially extended until 1978.

“During the Vietnam War, people that were peeling potatoes in San Diego, never even getting close to Vietnam, could get their citizenship and the government never contested that. They also didn’t contest giving citizenship to people who enlisted after the war ended, but before 1978,” said Shusterman. “So, what’s the big deal with the Grenada invasion. The only thing that makes this controversy funny is that the president was ill-advised by someone to limit the order to Grenada. That’s why they’re red-faced now.”

Reyes’ attorney, Robert Mautino, forced the INS to act on Reyes’ petition by convincing U.S. District Judge Earl Gilliam to grant a hearing on Dec. 6, where both sides will argue the matter. On Sept. 6, INS attorneys attempted to convince Gilliam to deny Mautino’s request for a hearing. They failed to do so and were unsuccessful again when they requested 120 days to prepare for the hearing.

“This case isn’t a big deal because there’s only one issue here . . . I say that part of the president’s order is outside of his executive powers. He doesn’t have the authority to impose a geographic limitation,” said Mautino, who practices immigration law in San Diego. “They never looked at the statute when they drew up the order. To be honest, they didn’t really know what they were doing.”

Navy and INS officials declined to discuss Reyes’ lawsuit because the case is pending. However, if Reyes wins the suit, Navy officials said that as many as 1,700 Filipino sailors could qualify for naturalization because they were on active duty during the Grenada campaign.

The Navy currently recruits about 400 sailors annually in the Philippines. Competition is keen for the positions, and as many as 24,000 applicants are tested annually.

The Filipinos’ situation is unique in the U.S. military. Resident aliens can obtain U.S. citizenship after serving honorably in the armed forces for a minimum of three years. However, Filipino sailors are not eligible for citizenship despite the fact that they may serve 20 years in the Navy.

Filipinos have been enlisting in the Navy since shortly after the Spanish-American War, when the United States colonized the Philippines in 1898. Between April, 1917, when the United States entered World War I, and October, 1978, when the Vietnam War was declared officially over, virtually every Filipino sailor--about 30,000--that enlisted during those 61 years became a U.S. citizen by virtue of the wars that this country has been involved in.

Navy officials said that since the Vietnam War ended, about 3,900 Filipino nationals have enlisted in the Navy, knowing they would never qualify for U.S. citizenship unless America went to war. But for 1,700 of them, the nine short days of the Grenada conflict may have opened the door to citizenship for them.

Although Reyes and other Filipino sailors did not serve in Grenada, Reyes argued that he and his colleagues are subject to be sent to any hot spot in the world, like other U.S. servicemen. And like other U.S. servicemen, they are liable to get killed in undeclared conflicts like the current one in the Persian Gulf, Reyes added.

As an example, Reyes referred to Navy corpsman Godofredo Romanillos Quirante, who enlisted in the Philippines. Quirante was attached to the Marine unit that was devastated when Moslem terrorists bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut. Quirante was among the more than 250 U.S. servicemen who died in the blast, which occurred two days before the Grenada invasion.