President Bush opted out of a formal ceremony for a Maryland soldier whose death sparked a bill to help immigrant soldiers become citizens, but instead sent the very pen used to sign the bill into law to the mother of the fallen veteran.
For Maryland congressional leaders who pushed for the Kendell Frederick Citizenship Act, the pen wasn’t enough.
“He could hold a public ceremony for additional military spending, but not for this,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., adding that Bush had a public ceremony Monday for the signing of a supplemental spending bill for the war effort.
The White House press office did not return several calls for comment. Bush was in Mississippi for a senator?s private fundraiser, and then went to Arkansasfor the state?s Republican fundraiser Tuesday.
Even if Bush had a White House ceremony, Frederick?s mother said she would still have the pain of losing her son because of a “failed process.” Frederick, a 21-year-old Army specialist, was posthumously named a U.S. citizen after dying in a convoy attack in Iraq in 2005.
“I didn?t want another mother to suffer the pain that I have,” said Michelle Murphy, Frederick?s mother.
Instead of a White House event, Cummings and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who wrote the Senate version of the bill, held a ceremony at Fort McHenry on Tuesday to commemorate the law.
Frederick was born in Trinidad, but moved to Randallstown as a teenager.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service rejected Frederick’s fingerprints and background check, even though they were good enough for him to join the Army, family members said.
Frederick’s commanding officer made it possible for Frederick to go from his base in Tikrit, Iraq, to Baghdad to get re-fingerprinted. That was when his convoy was attacked and he died in an explosion.
“What Kendell went through was an embarrassment of the immigration process,” said Michelle Lazerow of the American Immigration Law Foundation.
Under the new law, fingerprints and background checks performed by the armed services will be counted in the citizenship process for legal immigrant service members. Mikulski and Cummings called the bill a significant change in American immigration policy.
Mikulski presented the bill ? and Bush’s pen ? to Frederick’s mother, as well as a gold eagle pin that only the female members of Congress wear to symbolize Murphy’s effort in getting national attention on the issue.
“She moved the hearts of a nation and the wheelsof government, as creaky as they are,” Mikulski said.
See also:
