Minn. immigrants who hoped to serve in military could face deportation

Esther Zhang and Ronald Yonggi spend most nights working out for hours at University of Minnesota campus gym in Minneapolis. They're staying in shape on the off chance they will be able to go basic training.

"It's like eating a meal every day. It's a habit," Zhang said after leg-pressing 245 pounds as a warm-up.

"I've been trying to distract myself from being anxious," said Yonggi, doing a handstand push-up.

He practices yoga and martial arts, lifts weights, and break-dances to stop himself "from being depressed, from being uncertain of what the future will be like and what's going to happen to me."

The two recent graduates enlisted in a Pentagon program that offers legal immigrants expedited citizenship through military service. The program began in 2008 to recruit people with vital language or medical skills lacking among U.S.-born soldiers. Thousands of soldiers have been through the program including the Army's 2012 soldier of the year.

But the program stalled in September when the Department of Defense required more background checks, putting life on hold for recruits like Zhang and Yonggi.

"The best analogy I can give you is it's kind of like if the Army decided before you can come into the Army you have to have a CAT scan because out of millions of Army recruits they found a certain number of people who had cancer," said immigration lawyer Margaret Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve in Anchorage who created the recruitment program Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest, or MAVNI.

"Well, that sounds really good. Except if you don't have the equipment and you don't have the trained medical professionals to do a CAT scan on everybody — and it's also really expensive — then you might grind your recruiting pipeline to a halt."

And last week, The Washington Post reported that a Defense Department memo shows one solution the Pentagon is considering for the overtaxed vetting process is to cancel contracts for those waiting for basic training assignment and ending MAVNI. That would leave recruits whose visas lapsed as they waited for assignment without legal protection from deportation.

Zhang and Yonggi both entered the U.S. as legal immigrants with student visas. They expected to be in basic training by now and assigned. Both could face deportation.

Zhang, who speaks Mandarin and has a degree in psychology, said she's struggled with trying to explain her decision to serve as a woman in the U.S. military to her family back in China. The uncertainty over whether her decision to enlist will ever lead to military service is even harder to justify.

"You know they always ask me 'Why are you still here? You said you were going to go to the military like last year?'" she said.

Yonggi just graduated from the University of Minnesota with a double major in chemistry and chemical engineering. But he has not been able to return home to see his family in Indonesia for almost a year and a half because it could further stall his background checks.

"This long wait nobody planned," said Sagar Dubey, a MAVNI recruit. He emigrated from India in 2014 on a work visa and serves as a mentor to some of the younger MAVNI recruits like Zhang and Yonggi.

"And there is a catch-22 situation because the rule was further changed to 'unless you have a completed background check'. And there was a new background check, and that is also not completed," Dubey said. "So, because of all that you cannot ship and you cannot ship because your investigation is not done. So, this is a kind of impasse."

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., is one of the lawmakers proposing bipartisan legislation that would protect the recruits whose visas expired amid delays. She is the senior Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

"All of a sudden many of these individuals through absolutely no fault of their own are finding that they could be all of a sudden here without a visa," McCollum said. "And then that could mean that they could face deportation. That's just &mdah; it's wrong. It goes against every tradition of the United States honoring its contracts and obligations, and it's also extraordinarily cruel."

Although the future of the program is uncertain, Zhang is hopeful that she will be able to serve in the military.

"I believe in people in United States," Zhang said. "They are working hard for us to get us in this military as- even though we are foreigners, but we been through some investigations and we have shown our dedication to this country."

The Army declined to comment on the MAVNI program and whether the background check process is still approving any recruits.