Thousands of Non-Citizen US Military Enlistees Locked Down on Post Due to Security Risk Issues
I was never a fan of allowing foreigners into the military and now it seems this program has become more trouble than it is worth:
Their brains, specialized talents and home country made them sought-after assets for the U.S. military.
Now these ambitious, well-educated Army recruits are finding themselves sidelined and under suspicion, many stalled wherever they were when the rules changed in late 2016. For some, that means being stuck under the restrictive rules of basic training or Army job specialty training in essential lockdown with few privileges, little to do and, as foreigners pending permanent immigration status, uncertainty about their futures.
Since 2009, the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest program has attracted 10,000 foreign-born recruits with language and medical skills to fill a recruitment and talent gap in the Army. In exchange, these mostly 30-somethings were offered the promise of professional advancement and a fast track to citizenship. But that stalled after the Department of Defense determined in September 2016 that MAVNIs posed “counterintelligence and security risks” (further detailed in a May 2017 memo) and instituted lengthy security screenings for every recruit in the program. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read much more at the link, but the way I look at it is if the military cannot recruit its own citizens to defend it than maybe the country is no longer worth defending.
The life of an IET Holdover serves only to embitter SM’es.
Thank Obama.
“…if the military cannot recruit its own citizens to defend it than maybe the country is no longer worth defending.”
The people who came up with the plan to hire non-citizens did not do so in order to defend the US. Their purpose was to destroy us.
Evidence? Look at how they talk about the military (“not the best and brightest”), our borders, our language, and our culture.
Even a pea-wit like me could see those folks were not trying to strengthen our country. And look at the historical data about armies during the rise and decline of Rome and Great Britain.
It’s not going to end well unless we can fire a lot more of the clowns who got us in this mess.
If they can hangout past 180 days they get “Veteran” status, Then build their Medical records and walk away with a tidy disability check for the rest of their lives.
I guess not all the Nigerian princes wanted to serve admirably.
I read the entire Stars and Stripes article. There were no complaints of anything the immigrants had done wrong. It was all about Army bureaucratic and management screw ups. As usual with such things the institution insulates itself in “nothing speak” and lets the dirt roll downhill, tarnishing the recruits.
The fact is there are some skills we won’t be able to fill indigenously when we need them. How many native Americans can speak Pashto?
The timing of this seems to correspond to the cries for “extreme vetting” a couple of years ago, but if these recruits had immigrated to the USA they must have already gone through some vetting from the State Department. And, as far as I know, there haven’t been any reports of any or those recruits doing anything against the country on the scale of Bradley Edward Manning or Nidal Hasan, both born a raised Americans.