© APPhD candidate, Panshu Zhao visiting the White House, April 2018.
Growing up in eastern China, Panshu Zhao fell in love with America. He read the Bible his parents gave him, watched Hollywood movies and studied the ideals of democracy. He jumped at the chance to attend graduate school at Texas A&M University.
In 2016, Zhao enlisted in the U.S. Army as part of a special recruitment program offering immigrants in the country legally a path to citizenship.
The future, he said, was bright.
Now, he is one of the dozens of immigrant recruits and reservists struggling with abrupt, often unexplained military discharges and canceled contracts. They traded being willing to risk their lives for the prospect of U.S. citizenship, a timeworn exchange that's drawn linguists, medical specialists and thousands of other immigrants to the military since the Revolutionary War.
"It's just like you're dropped from heaven to hell," Zhao told The Associated Press on Friday.
It is unclear how many men and women who enlisted through the special recruitment program have been ousted from the Army, but
immigration attorneys told the AP that they know of more than 40 recruits who recently have been discharged or whose status has become questionable.
Comment: The author's point is taken, in the the war-mad West has at bottom, caused the displacement of millions of people. However, he has studiously ignored the results after Europe's initial welcome of refugees/migrants, as they poured in their tens of thousands. It has been disastrous for the native populations as migrants demand the wholesale remaking of European culture to their own liking. Mr. Koenig appears not spare a thought for that destruction. He thinks the native Europeans deserve it.