VETERANS: BANISHED AND BETRAYED

Barton Kunstler, Ph.D.
Author, "The Hothouse Effect"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barton-kunstler-phd/veterans-banished-and-bet_b_421828.html

"Banished veterans." The phrase shouldn't make sense. Someone joins the military, fights in a war, returns home, and then is banished? Thankfully, this can't happen here...

But it is happening here. Thousands of men and women who have risked their lives in the country's wars have been deported or are living under the threat of deportation because they committed non-violent crimes that often wouldn't warrant serving jail time. Many of these vets suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition often overlooked by our nation's health care system.

These vets can be deported because they are not U.S. citizens. Gabriel Delgadillo, a Vietnam veteran, committed a burglary in 1988. Eight years later, burglary was declared a deportable offense. Only then, in a retroactive application of the new law, was he deported, leaving behind a wife and seven children. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) officially deplored Delgadillo's deportation in May, 1999, stating:

These harsh new measures have now snared immigrants who spilled their blood for our country. As the INS prepares to deport these American veterans, we have not even been kind enough to thank them for their service with a hearing to listen to their story and consider whether, just possibly, their military service or other life circumstances outweigh the government's interest in deporting them.

Robyn Sword, an activist on behalf of banished vets whose fiance, Rohan Coombs, is facing deportation for drug offenses, pointed out in an interview that many people simply can't get past the image of a "convicted felon." Who wants them here, right? That might be understandable in cases of violent crime but such an attitude is inexcusable when applied to most banished veterans.

Sword is a fellow Facebook member.

Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barton-kunstler-phd/veterans-banished-and-bet_b_421828.html