Question: Hasn’t service in the American military historically been a legitimate way to earn citizenship?
It used to be that way. Under the Carter administration, I believe, who probably did it in an attempt to further reduce the size of the military as well as lessening the amount we spent on maintaining it, in the seventies simply joining the military was no longer proof of your commitment to this country's core values. You were on your own, and had to go fill out the forms and apply for citizenship on your own dime, with no more consideration than that of any other applicant.
Less, actually, since I happen to know for a fact that they were handing out the questions and answers to the citizenship exams to the Vietnamese "boat people" so that they could get their citizenship without too much bother.
Keep in mind that this applies to “DREAMERS”, who were ostensibly brought into this country as children, possibly without knowlege of what was happenening to them and possibly without knowledge that they are here illegally.
This strikes at an article posted yesterday about how Conservatives are great at facts and statistics, but get beat repeately and severely by Democrats on narrative.
Hispanic teenager who thinks he’s a citizen walks into a recruiting station because he wants to serve “his country”, finds out mom and/or dad lied to him about being brought here illegally when he was in the low single digits, and gets arrested and put into jail pending deportation proceedings may be the legally correct thing to do, but it really makes Conservatives look like complete a**holes when it’s shown on the evening news and used as the basis for Dem campaign ads.