CaribWorldNews, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. May 27, 2008: Close to 40 percent of the foreign-born soldiers in active duty in the U.S. military are from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Statistics on `Immigrants in the US Armed Forces,` compiled by the Migration Policy Institute, show that foreign-born military personnel from Latin America and the Caribbean constituted 38.7 percent or 23,926 of all the foreign born in the U.S. armed forces.

Of that number, 3,064 are from Jamaica while 1,372 are from the Dominican Republic.

According to data from the Department of Defense, more than 65,000 immigrants were serving on active duty in the US Armed Forces as of February 2008 while since September 2001, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services has naturalized more than 37,250 foreign-born members of the US Armed Forces and granted posthumous citizenship to 111 service members.

As of February 2008, 11,182 foreign-born women were on active duty in the US armed forces, representing 17.2 percent of all foreign born serving in the military.

The foreign born represented 4.8 percent of the 1.36 million active-duty personnel in the armed forces as of February 2008 while there were 26,597 foreign-born individuals in the navy as of February 2008, representing 40.9 percent of the total foreign-born population on active duty. There were also 14,896 foreign-born individuals (22.9 percent) serving in the army, 13,436 (20.7 percent) in the air force, and 10,104 (15.5 percent) in the marines.

Immigrants also constituted 8.1 percent of the 327,680 navy personnel as of February 2008 while 5.4 percent of the 188,511 men and women serving in the marines were foreign-born compared to 4.1 percent of the 324,881 in the air force and 2.9 percent of the 520,386 serving in the Army.

The data was released as the United States paused to remember its service men and women as well as the veterans and those who lost their lives in wars, past and present.