Veterans Drawn Into Immigration Debate

Ernesto Rodriguez poses with a picture of his son, Marine Lance Corporal Marcial Rodriguez, at his home April 21, 2006, in Painesville, Ohio. Marcial Rodriguez, who grew up in a Mexican farming village, is offended that the country he went to war for might deport his relatives who are living here illegally. (AP Photo/Ron Schwane) (Ron Schwane - AP)

Rodriguez enlisted in 2004 after graduating from high school in Painesville, Ohio. Nine months later, he was combing Iraq for insurgents near the Syrian border. He barely escaped death when three friends of his were killed by a roadside bomb last June.

Rodriguez is now a freshman at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, where he is studying international relations. He said he has dreamed since boyhood of joining the CIA. He speaks English and Spanish and is learning French.

His father, Ernesto Rodriguez, crossed illegally into the United States in 1976 after deciding that he would never be able to support a family in Mexico. He had dropped out of school after third grade and had been farming corn in the Mexican state of Guanajuato from age 16. After getting caught by the Border Patrol, he made it on a second try and worked on a chicken farm near Dallas.

The elder Rodriguez, now 47, became a permanent resident under a 1986 law that gave legal status to 2.6 million immigrants. He moved to Ohio to find work and in 1998 got permission to bring his wife and three children this country. Marcial was 13 at the time.

Marcial's cousin Eli Rodriguez illegally crossed the border in 1999 and moved in with Marcial's father. Eli Rodriguez paid a smuggler $1,200 to bring him across the Arizona desert.

"He's like a brother," Marcial Rodriguez said. "He's just working for a better life, nothing more. Mexico has nothing to offer him."

Eli, 24, married a Mexican woman he met in Ohio, rented an apartment and makes $10 an hour as a landscaper. He said he hopes to obtain legal status and join the military.

"I want to join the military, but I can't. This country has given me a lot," he said. "I would like to serve."