There is a new way for immigrants to receive citizenship of this country. The U.S. military is going to start granting temporary immigrants the chance to become permanent citizens within as little as six months if they enlist in the war. The only requirement is that they had to have lived in the U.S. for a minimum of two years without leaving for longer than 90 days. They also must pass background checks that make sure there is no prior criminal record. This plan will start by recruiting immigrants who speak 35 different languages, with the exclusion of Spanish, along with 300 medical professionals. The program will start off with only 1,000 open military spots, but it could end up with close to 14,000. In order to become a citizen, language experts will have to serve 4 years, and medical professionals will have to serve 3. If they do not complete these terms, their citizenship may be revoked.
The military sees this as beneficial, because temporary immigrants often have better foreign language skills and education than many of the Americans who are already enlisted. By having people familiar with other languages enlisted in the army, the military can “accomplish the missions with more accuracy.” Also, it is difficult for the army to attract doctors and language experts, so by allowing temporary immigrants to enlist, the number of these professionals in the military could expand greatly.
Opposition to this program believe that this will bring too many immigrants into the country when we already have a large enough population with many living in poverty as it is. Immigrants may only increase the problem. Another concern is that this may be a way for terrorists to infiltrate the American military.
What do you think? Will this program be a great addition to our military system, or could it ultimately be detrimental to our country?
Saturday, February 14, 2009
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4 comments:
This is almost like blackmail to me. I mean, it's great that they're giving people a possibly faster way to become citizens, but if you look at the numbers, they're just giving them something to do until then, because you have to stay here for 5 years without leaving for more than 90 days to become a citizen. I know, I'm only a naturalized citizen myself, I wasn't born here. But these people need to be here for at least two years legally and then serve for either three or four years. The language experts actually have to wait one extra year. This whole thing seems kinda fishy, but I don't know much about the military, so who knows, it might turn out to be a good thing. They are kinda offering jobs to people in the time of a recession, so I guess it can't be all bad.
~Kimiya
I feel like this is a sort of "send them to die instead of us" thing, and it doesn't feel quite right... but I doubt it will cause a significant increase in immigration. Most people probably would prefer not to die. Plus if there's only a limited amount of spots for them to apply, it probably won't result in a giant influx of immigrants --> citizens. It would, however, definitely be beneficial to the military which i guess is a good thing.
I actually think that this program could be beneficial. Allowing illegal immigrants to become legal citizens after serving with the armed forces will both benefit the armed forces and the immigrants as they will be able to become full fledged citizens, vote and voice their opinions. I do not believe it is blackmail because if they do not want to serve immigrants can continue to live in the USA.
I feel like this program will benefit both immigrants and the armed forces. It will offer immigrants the opportunity to become citizens and strengthen our army. This program is voluntary is it not. No one is forcing immigrants to serve in the army, it is simply a faster alternative that will grant them citizenship sooner. It's a gamble in a sense. Of course an individual could die or become injured in combat and this will affect them for the rest of their lives, but they could also return to the U.S. healthy and legal citizens. They could wait and hope for citizenship or they could take steps to guarantee that they will become citizens in a certain number of years. Its a personal choice and i think its definitely a good thing that our country is altering its immigration policy somewhat no matter how controversial. I look at this program as a form of immigration experimentation, we'll just have to see how beneficial it actually is.
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