By Elliot Spagat

Marcial Rodriguez, a U.S. Marine who grew up in a Mexican farming village, is offended that the country he went to war for might deport his relatives who are living here illegally.

Three months after the lance corporal returned to Ohio from the fighting in Iraq, the U.S. House adopted a bill that would make Rodriguez’s cousin a felon for being one of the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants.

Rodriguez, 20, said he enlisted in the Marine reserves to repay the debt he felt owed to a country that had given him an education and a home for his family.

“People from many different countries are fighting, not just from Mexico,” he said. “We want to participate in this country.”

It is unclear how many soldiers find their loyalties similarly divided, but at a time when Pentagon has stepped up recruiting of Hispanics to fill recruiting quotas, experts say a crackdown on illegal immigration would undoubtedly cause resentment in the ranks.

“How do you tell them we’re going to deport their parents and grandparents?” asked Hector Flores, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a group that has encouraged Hispanics who do not plan to attend college to join the military. “That’s not America.”

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“After serving our country, to see our relatives now criminalized through this legislation is provoking a lot of people,” said Mariscal, director of Chicano studies at the University of California, San Diego.

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As a veteran myself, I am offended by this Marine thinking his family can continue to break the law even though he served this great nation. By oath, military members are charged to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The Constitution of the United States is the law of this great land; there is no greater fixed principle of justice and law.

The constitution gives Congress the authority to “…establish a uniform rule of naturalization…” Under current laws created by Congress, someone who jumps the border and is not documented under proper legal procedures are termed “illegal aliens.” Clearly, it is against the law for the person(s) in question to be within the territories of the United States. What this Marine refuses to understand is that his family broke immigration laws - laws protected through the United States Constitution, which he swore to defend.