[Marxism] U.S. Military Will Offer Path to Citizenship

[Bonnie Weinstein <giobon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

U.S. Military Will Offer Path to Citizenship
By JULIA PRESTON
February 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/us/15immig.html?ref=world

Stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American military will  
begin recruiting skilled immigrants who are living in this country  
with temporary visas, offering them the chance to become United  
States citizens in as little as six months.

Immigrants who are permanent residents, with documents commonly known  
as green cards, have long been eligible to enlist. But the new  
effort, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed  
forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United  
States for a minimum of two years, according to military officials  
familiar with the plan.

Recruiters expect that the temporary immigrants will have more  
education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than  
many Americans who enlist, helping the military to fill shortages in  
medical care, language interpretation and field intelligence analysis.

“The American Army finds itself in a lot of different countries where  
cultural awareness is critical,” said Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley,  
the top recruitment officer for the Army, which is leading the pilot  
program. “There will be some very talented folks in this group.”

The program will begin small — limited to 1,000 enlistees nationwide  
in its first year, most for the Army and some for other branches. If  
the pilot program succeeds as Pentagon officials anticipate, it will  
expand for all branches of the military. For the Army, it could  
eventually provide as many as 14,000 volunteers a year, or about one  
in six recruits.

About 8,000 permanent immigrants with green cards join the armed  
forces annually, the Pentagon reports, and about 29,000 foreign-born  
people currently serving are not American citizens.

Although the Pentagon has had wartime authority to recruit immigrants  
since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, military officials have  
moved cautiously to lay the legal groundwork for the temporary  
immigrant program to avoid controversy within the ranks and among  
veterans over the prospect of large numbers of immigrants in the  
armed forces.

A preliminary Pentagon announcement of the program last year drew a  
stream of angry comments from officers and veterans on Military.com,  
a Web site they frequent.

Marty Justis, executive director of the national headquarters of the  
American Legion, the veterans’ organization, said that while the  
group opposes “any great influx of immigrants” to the United States,  
it would not object to recruiting temporary immigrants as long as  
they passed tough background checks. But he said the immigrants’  
allegiance to the United States “must take precedence over and above  
any ties they may have with their native country.”

The military does not allow illegal immigrants to enlist, and that  
policy would not change, officers said. Recruiting officials pointed  
out that volunteers with temporary visas would have already passed a  
security screening and would have shown that they had no criminal  
record.

“The Army will gain in its strength in human capital,” General  
Freakley said, “and the immigrants will gain their citizenship and  
get on a ramp to the American dream.”

In recent years, as American forces faced combat in two wars and  
recruiters struggled to meet their goals for the all-volunteer  
military, thousands of legal immigrants with temporary visas who  
tried to enlist were turned away because they lacked permanent green  
cards, recruiting officers said.

Recruiters’ work became easier in the last few months as unemployment  
soared and more Americans sought to join the military. But the  
Pentagon, facing a new deployment of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan,  
still has difficulties in attracting doctors, specialized nurses and  
language experts.

Several types of temporary work visas require college or advanced  
degrees or professional expertise, and immigrants who are working as  
doctors and nurses in the United States have already been certified  
by American medical boards.

Military figures show that only 82 percent of about 80,000 Army  
recruits last year had high school diplomas. According to new  
figures, the Army provided waivers to 18 percent of active-duty  
recruits in the final four months of last year, allowing them to  
enlist despite medical conditions or criminal records.

Military officials want to attract immigrants who have native  
knowledge of languages and cultures that the Pentagon considers  
strategically vital. The program will also be open to students and  
refugees.

The Army’s one-year pilot program will begin in New York City to  
recruit about 550 temporary immigrants who speak one or more of 35  
languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Igbo (a tongue spoken in  
Nigeria), Kurdish, Nepalese, Pashto, Russian and Tamil. Spanish  
speakers are not eligible. The Army’s program will also include about  
300 medical professionals to be recruited nationwide. Recruiting will  
start after Department of Homeland Security officials update an  
immigration rule in coming days.

Pentagon officials expect that the lure of accelerated citizenship  
will be powerful. Under a statute invoked in 2002 by the Bush  
administration, immigrants who serve in the military can apply to  
become citizens on the first day of active service, and they can take  
the oath in as little as six months.

For foreigners who come to work or study in the United States on  
temporary visas, the path to citizenship is uncertain and at best  
agonizingly long, often lasting more than a decade. The military also  
waives naturalization fees, which are at least $675.

To enlist, temporary immigrants will have to prove that they have  
lived in the United States for two years and have not been out of the  
country for longer than 90 days during that time. They will have to  
pass an English test.

Language experts will have to serve four years of active duty, and  
health care professionals will serve three years of active duty or  
six years in the Reserves. If the immigrants do not complete their  
service honorably, they could lose their citizenship.

Commenters who vented their suspicions of the program on Military.com  
said it could be used by terrorists to penetrate the armed forces.

At a street corner recruiting station in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, Staff  
Sgt. Alejandro Campos of the Army said he had already fielded calls  
from temporary immigrants who heard rumors about the program.

“We’re going to give people the opportunity to be part of the United  
States who are dying to be part of this country and they weren’t able  
to before now,” said Sergeant Campos, who was born in the Dominican  
Republic and became a United States citizen after he joined the Army.

Sergeant Campos said he saw how useful it was to have soldiers who  
were native Arabic speakers during two tours in Iraq.

“The first time around we didn’t have soldier translators,” he said.  
“But now that we have soldiers as translators, we are able to trust  
more, we are able to accomplish the mission with more accuracy.”


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