Council Backs Citizenship for Troops

The Los Angeles City Council urged President Bush on Wednesday to grant citizenship to all immigrants serving in the United States military.

“When people hear that we have men and women dying for us ... who are not yet American citizens, everyone agrees that this does not make sense,” said Councilwoman Janice Hahn.

Hahn said she introduced the council motion, approved unanimously, after attending the funeral of Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, 28, an orphan from Guatemala who rode freight trains through Mexico to the U.S. and joined the U.S. Marine Corps. Gutierrez, who lived with a foster family in the South Bay, was killed March 21. He was awarded U.S. citizenship posthumously.

At Gutierrez’s April 7 funeral, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony told the crowd he had written a letter to the president calling for citizenship to be conferred immediately on soldiers in the Persian Gulf. On Wednesday, Mahony visited the City Council chamber to show his support for the motion.

“Let his death not be in vain,” Council President Alex Padilla said of Gutierrez. “Not only for the military effort ... but as a social wake-up call for how we treat the 37,000 noncitizen members of the armed services.”

On April 9, the Chicago City Council approved a similar resolution to the president after hearing of Mahony’s proposal.

A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Bush is sensitive to the issue. Last year, the president issued an executive order allowing so-called “green card” soldiers to be eligible for immediate citizenship consideration.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said she hoped the council’s action Wednesday would be a lesson to Angelenos to “improve our attitudes toward immigrants in this country.”