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(Washington) The Congress may grant
"special immigrant status" to 50 foreign translators who were hired the
US military to replace Americans fired by the Pentagon after they came out.
Despite previously saying that under ''don't ask,
don't tell'' it had discharged seven translators who specialized in Arabic, records
obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request show that between 1998 and
2004, the military discharged 20 Arabic and six Farsi speakers (story)
But, now the Pentagon acknowledges the true number was 54.
During a House Judiciary
Committee hearing today to consider the legislation to grant immigrant status to
the replacement translators, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) called on Congress to
end the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
“The answer to our dire need for translators
is not to give U.S. citizenship to Iraqis and Afghanis,” Nadler
said, “but rather to stop discriminating against American citizens who are
ready to serve their country.
“Because of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’
the military continues to devote its resources to rooting out patriotic gay
Americans whose service is central to the war on terror. This is just another
example of how ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is not in the best interest of
our national security, and why we should repeal it as soon as possible.”
Nadler is a cosponsor of H.R. 2293, which would
repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He vowed today to pursue all avenues
toward ending discrimination in the military.
Nadler's bill is supported by a bi-partisan
coalition of than 50 Congressional representatives.
In February the Government Accounting Office
released a report showing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has cost taxpayers
more than $200 million since its inception in 1993. (story)
More than 10,000 service members have been
discharged over the last 10 years under the policy according to statistics from
the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.
The GAO report says that it cost taxpayers
$10,500 a person, to recruit replacements for enlisted service members who were
discharged from 1994 to 2003 for being gay. The figures do not include the
hundreds of officers who also had been discharged under the policy.
The report said that GAO investigators could not
quantify the cost of losing personnel discharged after having been trained in
certain areas of expertise like intelligence or languages like Arabic, Chinese,
Farsi or Korean.
©365Gay.com 2005
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