Posted on 02/16/2009 8:20:25 AM PST by lewisglad
WASHINGTON: For decades, high-skilled professionals from across the world, particularly India, have fought their way to US citizenship through legal immigration channels — a process that can take up to a decade or more. Now, Uncle Sam is making it easy. Fight your way — literally — to American citizenship in as little as six months.
In a far reaching proposal, the US military will open its doors to skilled immigrant guest workers (such as those who hold H-1B visas) who have lived in the US for a minimum of two years. The move is aimed at offsetting the poor recruitment intake from traditional sources at a time the US military is stretched thin by deployments in Iraq and the Af-Pak theater.
US Green card holders, also known as permanent residents, have long been eligible to enlist in the military. But this is the first time since the Vietnam War that the armed forces will be open to temporary immigrants and offer them a path to citizenship, a move that in some ways amounts to outsourcing its wars.
The program comes at a time when skilled immigrants in the US are facing a slowing job market, offering them an avenue to turn potential pink slips into not just Green cards, but citizenship — if they are so obsessed about their American Dream.
A pilot program that will take in 1000 immigrant recruits nationwide will begin in New York City in the first year, according the New York Times, which first reported the development on Sunday.
By going to the pool of skilled immigrants, recruiters actually expect to improve the quality of US military personnel, since most foreign skilled guest workers typically have more education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than many Americans who enlist. This is expected to help the military to fill shortages in medical care, language interpretation and field intelligence analysis.
The program is particularly germane to Indian guest workers who constitute the largest segment of skilled foreign workers in the US, and although Spanish-speaking Latinos constitute the largest group of immigrants, they are largely unskilled.
The one-year pilot program in New York City that will recruit 550 personnel (rest 450 will come from across the country) explicitly excludes Spanish speakers, while being open to immigrants who speak one or more of 35 languages, including Hindi/Urdu, Tamil, Arabic, Chinese, Nepalese, Pashto etc. US officials have said in the past that they sorely lacked field intelligence operatives with requisite language skills to be deployed in the Af-Pak theater.
The army’s program will also include about 300 medical professionals to be recruited nationwide. If the pilot program, which is restricted to the army and some other agencies, succeeds, it will expand for all branches of the military
for the AFIRE ping list
It looks like this has been a long time in planning. And also, the recruitment targets have all been met, so this is another manufactured crisis.
“Why don’t they just create the “American Foreign Legion”.
That would be better. You have to complete an entire hitch in the French Foreign Legion before you get French citizenship.
My thoughts exactly!
“I knew a Filipino guy who, if I remember right, had enlisted into such a program.”
It made them eligible to apply for citizenship, and, barring any impediments, they were generally approved. It wasn’t automatic, though.
The Navy, at least, had such a program from soon after War II. Not sure about before that or after 1999.
There will always be more American recruits than the guest workers, anyway, and the military has been known for decades to be a way into the middle and upper class, for those with limited skills, who aspire to it.
Correct. Programs of this type have been going on at least since the '70's. I have seen Koreans, Hispanics, Filipinos, Croatians, and Cambodians (to name a few) become citizens in this manner.
I’d put a /sar if it was sar. . . . but it ain’t.
I don't know why you'd make such a post. It's BS!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. . .
And . . . you say that . . . because
. . . being the super informed person that you seem to want to appear to be . . .
you HAVE READ
at least 50% of the quotes of our leaders the last 100 years ref’d in my tagline:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2130557/posts?page=81#81
AND you have JUST ARBITRARILY DECIDED ON YOUR OWN WISDOM
that they were ALL LYING????
Soooooooooooooooooooooooo impressive.
I bow to your brilliance.
When I was a boot in the Marines we had a guy in our platoon who also happened to be the oldest recruit. He was a soldier from Venezuela working his way towards American citizenship. Good troop and he was also the only decorated Marine in the ranks on graduation day.
Sorry, but their statement was an absolute.
It may be true for some but not most.
Of course they have . . .
HOWEVER, this seems to be a massively increased program . . .
AND
Perhaps you have ran across the notion that
CONTEXT can be important . . .
As I note with my students . . . to determine whether something is GOOD/BAD; RIGHT/WRONG; BETTER/WORSE; CONSTRUCTIVE/DESTRUCTIVE; MORE USEFUL/LESS USEFUL . . . ETC.
THEY NEED TO KNOW 3 THINGS, AT LEAST:
1. WHAT’S THE GOAL CONCERNED?
2. WHAT’S THE CRITERIA/ STANDARD OF MEASURE that tells you WHEN that goal has been reached/sufficiently reached?
3. WHAT’S THE CONTEXT.
CONTEXT CAN BE CRUCIAL.
If Barney Frank caught you in a congressional hallway and grabbed you below the belt with a gleam in his eye . . .
that would be a different context
than the Doctor in his examining room checking for testicular cancer.
#######################
Perhaps you’ve noticed . . . the current CONTEXT INCLUDES:
1. A GLOBALIST OLIGARCHIC MARXIST HEDONIST IMPOSTER “President’ hell-bent on destroying our Republic in a grand play to help coerce the planet more overtly into the more overt form of the global government.
2. The planned financial melt-down of particularly the USA but also the world is similarly off and running toward the same goal in number 1.
3. There are already multiple reports the last 10+ years of foreign troops housed “for training” of course, in out of the way “mothballed” military bases.
4. There are already multiple reports the last 10+ years of a formal Oligarchic plan . . . amidst deliberately scheduled massive civil unrest and probably war and crime—the imposition of martial law.
5. There are recently increasing reports of Mexican and other gangs being approached by the Oligarchic powers that be to receive training and liason toward creating a super massive crime wave on signal toward causing the populace to clamor for martial law.
6. There have been repeated reports from multiple military personnel in Iraq and elsewhere of being trained in URBAN USA LOCATION WARFARE . . . AND removal of selected individuals to camps in the wee hours of the morning—when they aren’t killed outright. Major groupings of our military have had to answer questions and fill out surveys about whether they would be willing to kill their own friends and relatives in such situations.
7. It’s reported from multiple sources that the Oligarchy is not at all convinced that our military can be counted on to kill their countrymen in sufficient numbers . . . and that foreign troops must be counted on to insure that the mission is accomplished post haste once ordered.
I could go on . . . however, I sometimes have this value that folks who are hell-bent on being willfully blind ought to enjoy some last shreds of free will.
So, I hope folks don’t ask for links. I don’t keep track of such links much at all. And I’ve studied this since 1965 . . . so that would be a LOT of refs. LOL.
Given our control over the Philippines for a time . . . we have maintained a special program for Filipinos ever since, imho.
How’s that myopic tunnel vision worked for you, so far?
I gather you haven’t read the refs in my tagline, either.
Holy mackaral. Any word on who she is/was?
I knew an Irish guy who did the same, if i recall correctly.
Actually, I think it’s a good idea. Only caveat would be that if they don’t complete their term of enlistment honorably their citizenship is revoked.
How about deserving what comes, then?
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