DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM Capt. Jason Ormsby spoke to Marines yesterday at the Kaneohe Marine Corps Base on the process of becoming a U.S. citizen under President Bush's recent executive order.

Marine Corps
speeding up process
of citizenship

The move aids an executive
order giving immediate citizenship
to military members

---

By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

In typical Marine Corps storm-the-beach fashion, legal experts at Kaneohe Bay have moved quickly to cut through the bureaucratic red tape connected with granting U.S. citizenship to those in uniform.

During a Fourth of July celebration, President Bush signed an executive order granting immediate citizenship to the more than 15,000 noncitizen members of the U.S. military.

The individual services, except for the Air Force, do not have exact numbers of people in uniform here affected by the order.

Some, like the Army, are still waiting for direction from the Pentagon before proceeding.

At Hickam Air Force Base, there were at least 13 people who qualified and are being briefed individually.

The most aggressive program is being conducted at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, where 33 Marines turned out yesterday for a briefing on the president's executive order.

Another session is planned tomorrow.

"We got requests from Marines deployed to Okinawa and Iwakuni (Japan)," said legal officer Capt. Jason Ormsby.

About six Marines at the briefing had already begun the process to become U.S. citizens before Bush's announcement.

Current immigration laws allow noncitizen members in peacetime to become citizens after three years of service, instead of the usual five-year wait required of nonmilitary applicants.

Lance Cpl. Keston Lashley, a native of Trinidad and Tobago, had applied to become a naturalized citizen in 1998 and is in the final stages of the process, with an interview scheduled with Immigration and Naturalization Service officials in Florida next month.

"It's a mind-boggling process," Lashley, 32, said, noting that he applied at the same time as his parents, who already had their application approved.

Cpl. Anna Soliz, a native of El Salvador, and her husband, Cpl. Gabriel Soliz of Belize, also plan to apply.

"I've always wanted to be a U.S. citizen ever since I moved to Los Angeles when I was 2," said Anna Soliz, 21, who joined the Marine Corps in 1999 in Los Angeles.

Others, like Lashley, who enlisted in the Marine Corps two years ago, said that some career fields such as law enforcement and security work are closed to noncitizens in the military.

Noncitizens also are barred from becoming officers in the military.

Ormsby, the officer in charge of Kaneohe's legal assistance office, estimated cutting the time for a qualified Marine to complete the INS process to four to six months, down from 18 months to two years.