America - From Around the World They Come to Fight

The Stars and Stripes reports on people from around the world coming to fight for America.

HEIDELBERG, Germany — They came from Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico and the Philippines. They came from Ghana, Micronesia, Albania and … Canada, Great Britain and Egypt?

Nearly 60 U.S. soldiers, stationed throughout U.S. Army Europe but originally from all parts of the globe, gathered Tuesday at Campbell Barracks to take the oath renouncing allegiance to “any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty” and become U.S. citizens.

“I think it’s the best country in the world. If we don’t like something, we can change it. Policies do change,” said Spc. Hatem Zaki, who was born in Egypt.

[...]

“The desire and intent is to better your lives … that you see some hope and some opportunity …,” he said.

That was the case for Spc. Aliaksei Kavalevski, formerly of the Republic of Belarus.

“I’ve got something I never had: the First Amendment,” he said.

But there was also a former Canadian citizen — who said she became a U.S. citizen in part to become eligible to be an officer in the U.S. Army — and a soldier who hailed from Great Britain.

“I said, ‘What is it that’s bringing you in?” Sapko said he asked the former Brit. “He said, ‘I want to be a citizen of the greatest country on earth.’ ”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------