In border towns, Mexicans and Americans enlist side by side

Move from Mexico City to southern California at age 12, get a green card at 18 and head down to the U.S. Army recruiting office to enlist.

Army Staff Sgt. Juan Barrios had a plan - until his mother stepped in.

"My parents wouldn't let me do it. They said it wasn't my country," recounts Barrios, now a 31-year-old recruiter in Brownsville.

"So I took a job at Costco (near Los Angeles)."

After a few years of 90-plus hour work weeks to support his wife and new son - and with Mama "out of the picture" - Barrios signed up for the Army in 1998. After special operations training in Hawaii and a tour in Iraq, he ended up at a recruiting station in Brownsville trying to sign up young men who, like him, wanted a career in the military but were not U.S. citizens.

Of the 1.4 million men and women serving in the U.S. military, about 20,000 are not citizens of this country. Many come from along the U.S.-Mexico border, from places like Rio Grande Valley, where between 20 and 30 percent of Army recruits are legal resident aliens when they enlist, recruiters said.

"It's a product of being on the border and the people living here," said Army Sgt. 1st Class Alejandro Garcia, a recruiter in McAllen.

"A lot of these kids came over here when they were little. They're American - they just have resident alien cards."

Priscilla Blanco, an 18-year-old senior at McAllen Memorial High School who moved to the Valley from Monterrey three years ago, joined the Army after a friend dragged her to the recruiter's office last year. The friend balked but Blanco, like any number of American high school students, wasn't ready for college and liked what the recruiter had to say.

"I want something different, some exercise. In college it's just books," she said. "Plus I want to travel."

In 2004, President Bush ordered that the wait time for non-citizen enlistees to apply for naturalization be reduced from three years to one year. Two years later, Bush lowered the requirement to one day, continuing a long history of foreign recruits that extends back through the War of 1812. The wait time for non-military is five years.

But the shortened wait time for enlistees has left little imprint on recruits in the Valley, said Army Sgt. 1st Class Peter Rentas, a recruiter in Brownsville.

"Most of them don't even ask about the citizenship thing," he said. "They're usually joining for other reasons, the same reasons all recruits join: a chance at an education, career training, service to country."

Army Cpl. Joe Rubio, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in March and was granted posthumous citizenship, was born in Reynosa but was raised and attended school in Mission. Rubio actually joined the Army in early 2006 but still hadn't filed his application for citizenship when he died, said his brother Edgar Rubio.

"He had been busy, but he mentioned he wanted to do it," Edgar said.

"He joined because he wanted to make a difference. His wife, myself, no one wanted him to join. But he always liked military life."

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 8,800 members of the military applied for naturalization in 2007. Of those, about 57 percent were approved, about 1 percent were denied and about 42 percent are pending. The average wait time once the application is filed is four to six months, a USCIS spokeswoman said.

Here in the Valley, Bush's order shortening the wait time for enlistees to apply prompted a flood of non-resident aliens inquiring about joining the military, but recruiters had to explain that one needed to be a legal permanent resident to take advantage of the policy.

"I still get phone calls" from illegal immigrants who want to enlist, Rentas said.

There is some expectation within the military that the new naturalization laws could increase recruitment at a time when the military is struggling to find enough personnel to fight the war in Iraq.

"There have been several policy changes that may encourage more non-citizens to consider military service," a U.S. Department of Defense release to the media reads.

Army Capt. Gilbert Escobedo, who oversees recruiting in South Texas, believes with time the relaxed naturalization laws should have an impact.

"It takes a little time. It hasn't hit the community yet," he said. "It's not something we directly advertise because we target everyone, not one specific group."