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Bush signs bill easing citizenship for troops

RANDALLSTOWN, Md. — Army Spc. Kendell Frederick lost his life while trying to become a citizen of the country he was fighting for. His mother hopes a bill signed into law Thursday by President Bush makes sure no other soldier dies the way her son did.

Frederick, a native of Trinidad who moved to the U.S. in 1999, was serving in Iraq in October 2005 when he was traveling in a convoy to get fingerprinted for his U.S. citizenship application. His convoy hit a roadside bomb and the 21-year-old was killed.

After three years of work by his mother and two Maryland Democrats, Bush signed the Kendell Frederick Citizenship Assistance Act, which aims to ease the citizenship process for service members. The law directs the Department of Homeland Security to use fingerprints taken when military personnel enlist and establishes a “help line.” It also taps an advocate to assist military personnel seeking citizenship.

The law could help the more than 33,000 noncitizens serving in the military, said Rep. Elijah Cummings, who worked on the bill with Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

Frederick had a sense of adventure that led him to join the Junior ROTC as a freshman in high school, becoming a platoon leader his senior year, said his mother, Michelle Murphy. He began eight years of Army service upon graduation, working as a mechanic who fixed power generators. In 2004, he began serving in Iraq.

Just before he left, he applied for citizenship at the urging of his mother, a 43-year-old naturalized citizen who wears his Army photo on dog tags around her neck. In between calls home with tales of 140-degree heat or tearful stories about friends’ deaths, Murphy started getting citizenship denials in the mail.

First, the immigration service said he had not paid a filing fee, which is supposed to be waived for military personnel. Then, Murphy was told he needed to make changes on the forms. Then, officials said they could not accept Frederick’s fingerprints taken in Iraq. Officials gave him two weeks to come to Baltimore to have the prints retaken.

“I couldn’t understand that because it stated on his application that he was in Iraq,” his mother said. “You’ve got men overseas fighting and you don’t have anything in place to help them?”

Eventually, Frederick arranged with immigration officials to get his fingerprints retaken in Iraq. But on the way, his convoy struck a roadside bomb.

Mikulski first heard about Frederick’s case when she called Murphy, who told Mikulski she wanted to help prevent military personnel from going through what Frederick had experienced. Mikulski vowed to help change the law.

If the Department of Homeland Security “had followed their own rules and also had just dealt with them with competency, that young man wouldn’t have been at that convoy,” Mikulski said. “But what we do know is that he did not die in vain. He died serving his country, and now, because of the work of his mother in his name, we have changed the law.”

Mikulski and Cummings introduced the legislation in December 2005, although it did not pass until this year because of scrutiny to make sure it did not lessen citizenship requirements, Cummings said.

Mikulski and Cummings plan to hold a ceremony Tuesday at Fort McHenry to mark the act’s passage.