For many kids, the military is seen as the best way to get ahead. "I got my ROTC diploma," says Luis Quintanilla, an eighteen-year-old high school senior from Colonia East Indian Hills, in Mercedes. "But I'm not sure about joining. Recruiters tell me that if I join, they will help me with my citizenship. The Marines have called me two times." (In fact, the military cannot assist with immigration status for its recruits.) Marist Father Mike Seifert, of the San Felipe de Jesus Catholic Church, in Cameron Park, is tired of seeing so many recruiters in the schools: "Every day the students see them at the high
school. They call every kid once a week. Recruit and recruit and recruit. And after they're in the Army, you see them stripped of their engagement, the spark of life. They trade that spark for sitting up straight." There are now roughly 41,000 legal aliens in the U.S. military. "We went to a high school the other day," says Sister Sanchez, "and there were about one hundred names on the wall-our parishioners in the armed forces. Every church has an altar with the pictures and names. The Rio Grande Valley has the highest percentage of soldiers who have been killed. About ten percent of the soldiers who
have gone to war have come back in body bags."