Pvt. Juan Escalante is an Army mechanic who repaired Humvees and tanks under threat of ambush in Iraq. He guarded prisoners of war in Iraq, and his comrades in the Third Infantry Division gave him a combat patch, recognizing his bravery.

Escalante is also an illegal immigrant whose parents carried him across the border when he was 4 years old. At 19, he bought a fake green card for $50 on the streets of Seattle to enlist in the Army. His motivation was the same as thousands of other young men and women who enlisted before and after we declared war on terrorism.

“Mainly, I wanted to join for college because I needed money for college,” Escalante recently told National Public Radio.

Pvt. Escalante’s parents’ application for legal status triggered a paper chase that led to him. Now he is in a holding pattern at Fort Stewart, in Georgia, while the Army decides his fate.

It’s obvious that this young man is a thoroughly Americanized soldier, but he’s also become a scapegoat for advocates of stricter immigration policies or extreme anti-terrorist measures — or both.

Mark Krikorian, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, told National Public Radio: “If illegal immigrants who managed to sneak into the military are automatically given green cards, that creates an enormous incentive for people to buy fraudulent documents and try to enlist in the military.”

The specter of one illegal immigrant joining the military has sparked the imagination of some national security worrywarts. They see a small army of terrorists joining to learn combat tactics and lethal skills or to get their hands on explosives.

They all need to calm down.

To begin with, nobody knows how many illegal immigrants are serving in the military. We know there are 37,000 noncitizens serving, but it’s not clear how many are undocumented.

Most adult illegal immigrants I’ve met — and I’ve met a lot — avoid any contact with U.S. authorities. Only the most assimilated ones would dare to enlist, in which case we don’t have to worry about them being graduates of fanatical, anti-American religious schools or terrorist cells in the Middle East or Asia.

To the Army’s credit, it isn’t in a hurry to give Escalante the boot.

“He has served us honorably but enlisted under false pretenses,” a high-ranking officer said. “The Army is between a rock and a hard place, legally.”

For now, the Army is looking at Escalante’s case individually. That’s how it works in the civilian world, where illegal immigrants who have been found out still get a chance to qualify for legal status. The fact that Escalante was only a child when he arrived and then served admirably during the war in Iraq argues in his favor.

Meanwhile, the military needs to fix an obvious failure in background checks. If they can’t detect fake green cards, how can we expect them to find the real terrorists lurking in the shadows?

Joe Rodriguez is a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. He can be reached via e-mail at jrodriquez@

mercurynews.com.