Posted on 12/27/2006 5:47:37 AM PST by Kimberly GG
WASHINGTON -- The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks -- including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer -- according to Pentagon officials.
Foreign citizens serving in the US military is a highly charged issue, which could expose the Pentagon to criticism that it is essentially using mercenaries to defend the country. Other analysts voice concern that a large contingent of noncitizens under arms could jeopardize national security or reflect badly on Americans' willingness to serve in uniform.
The idea of signing up foreigners who are seeking US citizenship is gaining traction as a way to address a critical need for the Pentagon, while fully absorbing some of the roughly one million immigrants that enter the United States legally each year."........
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
That washington times articles does not speak to the fact that Bush has already stated that he intends to find a way EXPAND the military. I guess he found it.
The Hessian troops did real well against George Washington, too.
It's simply unacceptable BW...how much more irreparable damage are we, as a nation, going to allow?
Bush is so busy giving it all away, flushing this country right down the drain...has he no memory of 9/11, is he completely unaware of the risk he continues to pose to our national security, or does he simply not care? And I simply do not understand anyone in their right mind continuing to support him.
Have you forgotten 9/11?
Ans. No. Military personel were not directly involved in the attack.
My point was, the Union Army had Irish Brigades and German Brigades, they grabbed men as they came off the boats from Europe. If they signed up, they got uniforms, 3 square meals a day, monthly pay and quick citizenship. Other European nationals were also involved, including muslims.
How many al-Qa'ida saboteurs would it take to knife the military in the back? 100? 50? 10? Talk about a can of worms!
Or do you think that the extremely PC military, at the direction of President "Islam is a religion of peace" Bush would put up a "no Muslims or Arabs allowed" sign at the recruiting station?
Aside from the fact that it's a bad sign when you need to outsource your national defense needs, it's a very bad idea to allow people we can't screen effectively into positions of trust. There's a big difference between recruiting immigrants and recruiting foreigners, because screening foreigners will be much harder.
I think the Globe most likely stretched the story just to make headlines. The Boston Globe is best used as a topic of discussion on Howie Carr. Locals like to laugh about it.
So the Puerto Rican guy is not a native-born American?
When I was in the Army during the Cold War many of our best soldiers were immigrants. For example, the Green Berets had a lot of Eastern European refugees whose language skills and knowledge of their home countries would have been crucial in the event of war. We could use a lot of Arabs and Persians in our military about now. Yes, we have to vet them first; we always do.
When Canada stayed out of Vietnam, there were Canadian who signed up with the US military to go fight there.
I don't know if I'm more dumbfounded by the article or by the replies on this thread? What the hey? I've heard every manner of excuse for allowing illegal aliens into this country, for not securing our borders, but to justify this is, imo, reprehensible! How are Americans going to fight for this country when they see no reason for doing so? Are they so freely willing, as GWB and the OBL, to give it away? I'm more convinced than ever that this country will learn and do nothing until each and every American has truly felt personally, the devistating affects of another attack. Why, is beyond my understanding.
Joining for adventure, patriotism, the chance to see the world, to get out and do something before college, to serve your country, to learn skills, or to get away from home, is a little different from joining for a 2000% increase in pay, a good shot at speedy U.S. citizenship, and better medical care for you and your family then you'd ever have in your home country. It's an order of magnitude different.
Charlie Rangel types love to say that the military takes advantage of poor people because the economy is so bad, they've got nowhere else to go. That they risk their lives because it's the only way out of poverty. Taking in foreigners would make this literally true. It would exploit people who really are desperately poor, and letting them fight our battles for us.
So, you're right to an extent, because everyone does 'get something'. No one I served with ever turned down their paycheck at the end of the month. Still, it's just not the same.
U.S. is recruiting misfits for army Felons, racists, gang members fill in the ranks
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/10/01/ING42LCIGK1.DTL
After falling short of its goals last year, military recruiting in 2006 has been marked by upbeat pronouncements from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claims of success by the White House, and a spate of recent press reports touting the military's achievement of its woman- and manpower goals.
But the armed forces have met with success only through a fundamental transformation, and not the transformation of the military -- that "co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology" that Rumsfeld is always talking about either.
This year, those methods have been pumped up and taken over the top in several critical areas that make the old Army ad tagline, "Be All You Can Be," into material for late-night TV punch lines of the future.
In 2004, the Pentagon published a "Moral Waiver Study," whose seemingly benign goal was "to better define relationships between pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service success." That turned out to mean opening more recruitment doors to potential enlistees with criminal records.
In February, the Baltimore Sun wrote that there was "a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms 'serious criminal misconduct' in their background" -- a category that included "aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats." From 2004 to 2005, the number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by more than 13 percent.
In June, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that, under pressure to fill the ranks, the Army had been allowing into its ranks increasing numbers of "recruits convicted of misdemeanor crimes, according to experts and military records." In fact, as the military's own data indicated, "the percentage of recruits entering the Army with waivers for misdemeanors and medical problems has more than doubled since 2001."
One beneficiary of the Army's new moral-waiver policies gained a certain prominence this summer. After Steven Green, who served in the 101st Airborne Division, was charged in a rape and quadruple murder in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, it was disclosed that he had been "a high-school dropout from a broken home who enlisted to get some direction in his life, yet was sent home early because of an anti-social personality disorder."
Recently, Eli Flyer, a former Pentagon senior military analyst and specialist on the relationship between military recruiting and military misconduct, told Harper's magazine that Green had "enlisted with a moral waiver for at least two drug- or alcohol-related offenses. He committed a third alcohol-related offense just before enlistment, which led to jail time, although this offense may not have been known to the Army when he enlisted."
With Green in jail awaiting trial, the Houston Chronicle reported in August that Army recruiters were trolling around the outskirts of a Dallas-area job fair for ex-convicts.
"We're looking for high school graduates with no more than one felony on their record," one recruiter said.
The Army has even looked behind prison bars for fill-in recruits -- in one reported case, they went to a "youth prison" in Ogden, Utah. Although Steven Price had asked to see a recruiter while still incarcerated, he was "barely 17 when he enlisted last January" and his divorced parents say "recruiters used false promises and forged documents to enlist him."
Law enforcement officials report that the military is now "allowing more applicants with gang tattoos," the Chicago Sun-Times reports, "because they are under the gun to keep enlistment up." They also note that "gang activity maybe rising among soldiers." The paper was provided with "photos of military buildings and equipment in Iraq that were vandalized with graffiti of gangs based in Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities."
Last month, the Sun-Times reported that a gang member facing federal charges of murder and robbery enlisted in the Marine Corps "while he was free on bond -- and was preparing to ship out to boot camp when Marine officials recently discovered he was under indictment." While this recruit was eventually booted from the Corps, a Milwaukee police detective and Army veteran, who serves on the federal drug and gang task force that arrested the would-be Marine, noted that other "gang-bangers are going over to Iraq and sending weapons back ... gang members are getting access to military training and weapons."
Earlier this year, it was reported that an expected transfer of 10,000 to 20,000 troops to Fort Bliss, Texas, caused FBI and local law enforcement to fear a turf war between "members of the FolkNation gang ... (and) a criminal group that is already well-established in the area, Barrio Azteca." The New York Sun wrote that, according to one FBI agent, "FolkNation, which was founded in Chicago and includes several branches using the name Gangster Disciples, has gained a foothold in the Army."
Another type of gang member has also begun to proliferate within the military, evidently thanks to lowered recruitment standards and an increasing tendency of recruiters to look the other way. In July, a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, found that because of pressing manpower concerns, "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" are now serving in the military. "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members," said Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator quoted in the report.(snip)
Are then any actual numbers to back the assertions up, or is everything anecdotal?
When all else fails play the old 'phobia' card.
"It would seem to me that the one sort of immigrant we would wish for above all others is the one who is willing to risk their life for this country."
I'm guessing you meant "the one sort of ILLEGAL immigrant"?
"Those who let their justifiable contempt for the one-worlder/open border/"cheap" labor chamber of commerce types predjudice them against the prospective immigrant willing to pay up front for the priviledge of U.S. citizenship are at best myopic."
Again, I'm guessing you meant, "prospective ILLEGAL immigrant"?
Seems it's YOUR myopic view that doesn't differentiate.
Apparently, your argument is that there is no such thing as a legal immigrant.
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