Court Rejects Filipinos’ U.S. Citizenship Bid

Several hundred Filipinos who served in the U.S. Navy at the time of the Grenada invasion were denied naturalization as U.S. citizens Monday. A federal appeals court ruled that an executive order by then-President Ronald Reagan was invalid.

The 3-0 decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a case from San Diego affects Navy recruits from the Philippines, who need not be U.S. residents. Other non-citizen members of the armed forces must be permanent legal residents of the United States and therefore are eligible for naturalization after three years of service.

Reagan issued an order in 1987 saying all non-citizen veterans who served in Grenada and adjacent islands during the nine-day U.S. invasion in October and November 1983 were eligible for naturalization, under a law covering foreign-born combat veterans.

The appeals court said the order was invalid because, as the government has now conceded, the law authorized a President to declare only a time period for citizenship eligibility, and not to specify geographic areas of service.

But the court also agreed with the government that the invalid designation of geographic areas could not be removed from the order, which would make all non-citizens in the armed services during the period eligible for naturalization. Instead, the court said, the order was entirely illegal and made no one eligible.

It is “apparent that the President would not have signed this order had he known it would encompass those aliens serving in the military in other geographical locations unrelated to the Grenada invasion,” said the opinion by Judge Stephen Trott.

The ruling upheld an earlier decision in the case by U.S. District Judge Earl B. Gilliam of San Diego.

It rejected an appeal by Arthur Espineli Reyes, a native of the Philippines who was recruited into the Navy in 1981, remains on active duty and is not a permanent legal resident of the United States. He was stationed in San Diego at the time of the Grenada invasion and was not called into combat.

His lawyer, Robert Mautino, estimated that several hundred Filipinos, mainly in San Diego and Los Angeles, are in the same situation.

“They’re subject to all of the military discipline that any American is subject to, all the risks of being killed or put in danger,” Mautino said. “But they don’t get the benefits that Congress actually intended them to get . . . just because the President made a mistake.”

He said the government’s lawyer indicated during oral arguments in May that foreign-born veterans who had actually served in Grenada had probably already taken advantage of Reagan’s order and become citizens. Though the order has been declared illegal, it seems unlikely that the government would move to revoke their naturalization, Mautino said.

Federal law makes eligible for citizenship any alien who serves honorably in active duty in the U.S. armed forces during a time that the President designates as a period of combat.

Mautino argued that the law was intended to benefit anyone serving in the armed forces at the time and might therefore have been sent into a combat area. But Trott said the argument did not fit a brief engagement like the Grenada invasion.

“In contrast to the major conflicts, there was little chance that any service personnel not originally sent to Grenada would be sent there during those nine days,” the judge said. “Such a limited involvement does not appear to be the scenario Congress had in mind when the decision was made to include all servicemen within a particular time period.”