Over 23,000 from Latin American and Caribbean serving in US Armed Forces

CaribWorldNews, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. May 27, 2008: Close to 40 percent
of the foreign-born soldiers in active duty in the U.S. military are
from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Statistics on `Immigrants in the US Armed Forces,` compiled by the
Migration Policy Institute, show that foreign-born military personnel
from Latin America and the Caribbean constituted 38.7 percent or
23,926 of all the foreign born in the U.S. armed forces.

Of that number, 3,064 are from Jamaica while 1,372 are from the
Dominican Republic.

According to data from the Department of Defense, more than 65,000
immigrants were serving on active duty in the US Armed Forces as of
February 2008 while since September 2001, the US Citizenship and
Immigration Services has naturalized more than 37,250 foreign-born
members of the US Armed Forces and granted posthumous citizenship to
111 service members.

As of February 2008, 11,182 foreign-born women were on active duty in
the US armed forces, representing 17.2 percent of all foreign born
serving in the military.

The foreign born represented 4.8 percent of the 1.36 million
active-duty personnel in the armed forces as of February 2008 while
there were 26,597 foreign-born individuals in the navy as of February
2008, representing 40.9 percent of the total foreign-born population
on active duty. There were also 14,896 foreign-born individuals (22.9
percent) serving in the army, 13,436 (20.7 percent) in the air force,
and 10,104 (15.5 percent) in the marines.

Immigrants also constituted 8.1 percent of the 327,680 navy personnel
as of February 2008 while 5.4 percent of the 188,511 men and women
serving in the marines were foreign-born compared to 4.1 percent of
the 324,881 in the air force and 2.9 percent of the 520,386 serving in
the Army.

The data was released as the United States paused to remember its
service men and women as well as the veterans and those who lost their
lives in wars, past and present