16 Pinoy soldiers receive US citizenship after war in Iraq

They fought with valor and skill under the Stars and Stripes during the war in Iraq and are now American citizens.

Sixteen Filipinos were among the 43 immigrants who served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln that was deployed to the Persian Gulf during the US-led coalition campaign to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The immigrants took their oath of citizenship Thursday in a ceremony that underscored how the US military has accommodated immigrants seeking naturalization in their adopted country.

The citizenship applications of these immigrants were brought to the top of the pile thanks to an executive order signed by US President George W. Bush last July to end the three-year wait required for members of the military to become eligible. Non-military immigrants must wait five years.

"Filipino-American heroes from the war in Iraq are changing the image of Filipinos across America," the San Francisco Chronicle said in its online edition Thursday.

"From (Marine Sgt.) Joseph Menusa to (Marine Lance Cpl.) OJ Santa Maria to (Army Specialist) Joseph Hudson, their stories embrace the full spectrum of what is considered to be the best American ideals of courage, sacrifice and death," wrote San Francisco based Filipino-American attorney Rodel Rodis.

"On April 11," Rodis wrote, "we saw images straight out of a John Wayne movie on the liberation of Bataan. A severely wounded Filipino soldier struggled out of his sickbed, begging to rejoin his comrades in the trenches. This time it wasn’t a faded film, it was live on CNN. And it wasn’t John Wayne beside the Filipino in the caves of Corregidor; it was the president of the United States observing Daly City resident Marine Lance Cpl. OJ Santa Maria, 21, following three surgeries in a Maryland hospital and enduring enormous pain, being sworn in as a US citizen."

Santa Maria was in tears as Bush told him "we’re proud to have you as an American." Santa Maria said he was crying "because I wanted to be back there. If I could move my arm, I’d go back to Iraq, sir. I wanted to be back with my platoon, back with my brothers."

That same day Joseph Menusa, 33, an immigrant from Tracy, also received his US citizenship. It was announced at his funeral in Santa Maria, Santa Barbara county.

The first Filipino-American casualty of the war in Iraq, he died on March 27 when his battalion clashed with a Republican Guard unit.

Joseph specialized in construction and demolition, according to a report in the Washington Post, and is survived by his widow, Stacy and three-year-old son Joshua.

This was not his first tour of duty in Iraq, as he had been part of the military detail that secured Iraq’s oil fields in the 1991 Gulf War.

At the memorial service for Joseph Menusa at the Tracy Community Center, Rodis said, "mainstream Americans congratulated Filipinos for producing such a hero."

He and his brother David were born in the Philippines and immigrated to the US with their mother when Joseph was 10. The Menusas settled in San Jose, California, where Joseph and David finished high school before Joseph joined the marines in 1989.

David also serves in the US military as a drill sergeant for the US marines, while Joseph had been stationed in California, Hawaii, Okinawa, Japan and Guantanmo Bay, Cuba. Most recently, he had been doing recruitment for the Marines in the San Francisco Bay area.

Army Ranger Staff Sgt. Niño Livaudais, 23, from Syracuse, Utah, was born in the Philippines. Killed by an Iraqi suicide bomber, Livaudais was buried on April 16 with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery — the American equivalent of the Libingan ng mga Bayani at Fort Bonifacio in Makati City.

Hudson, meanwhile, was one of the first prisoners of war (POWs) in the war on Iraq. His mother Anecita learned of her son’s release over the Filipino Channel, a satellite service television channel. Live on CNN she saw her son gain his freedom and, along with seven of his fellow POWs, return to a hero’s welcome in Texas.

The Filipino soldier’s valor has changed the way Americans view Filipino immigrants, who, up to the 1940s, were called "Dumb Flips" after Filipinos were stereotyped as subservient houseboys. In 1942, however, Rodis said, "a sea change in attitude occured when Americans learned of the incredible heroism of the starved, outmanned, outgunned Filipino defenders of Bataan and Corregidor... Americans who looked down on Filipino men saw them in a new light as brave soldiers risking death to defend America. Filipinos basked in the reflected glory of their countrymen in uniform."

According to figures taken from the US Department of Defense, Filipinos comprise 20.6 percent of all non-citizens in the US.

The other immigrants who sailed back to their new country aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln came from Mexico, Cuba, Ukraine, South Korea and Vietnam. — AFP