UPDATE II:
In a piece providing additional information on the MAVNI program, the Military Times gives the bottom line, “…far more than 40 may soon be weeded out – and it’s possible that the majority of the remaining 1,000 or so participants in the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest, or MAVNI, program will be let go before they can be cleared for duty.”
Read here the case of Panshu Zhao from eastern China who “fell in love with America,” attended graduate school at Texas A&M, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2016 under MAVNI, and now is “one of the dozens of immigrant recruits and reservists struggling with abrupt, often unexplained military discharges and canceled contracts.”
Zhao, who while in limbo continued to pursue his PhD at Texas A&M, says:
I’m not a national threat. On the contrast, I’m a national merit because people like me with higher education and critical skills, we want to serve this great U.S. Army. I’m a good scientist no matter what.
UPDATE I:
Joy Reid, sitting in for Rachel, devoted an extensive part of Friday’s Rachel Maddow show to this topic.
Watch it here:
Original Post:
Less than one year ago, during National Hispanic Heritage Month, president Trump proclaimed:
From America’s earliest days, Hispanic Americans have played a prominent and important role in our national heritage, and Hispanic Americans continue to embody the pioneering spirit of America today.
Along with that proclamation and in honor of “Hispanic Heritage in the Defense Department,” DoD published several stories on how immigrants have distinguished themselves in and contributed to the U.S. military.
As a matter of fact, more than 700 — or more than 20 percent — of the 3,500 recipients of our nation’s highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, are immigrants.
A recent Memorial Day article, “The American Story Is Not Told on Birth Certificates…” details how hundreds of thousands of immigrants have served, and thousands have died, in the ranks of the U.S. military in every major conflict, starting with the War of 1812.
On the Fourth of July, President Trump praised the U.S. military for keeping our country “safe, strong, proud, mighty and free” and thanked them for putting their lives on the line to defend the nation.
The president may or may not have included some immigrant service men and women in his praise and thanks, for only 24 hours later, the Associated Press (AP) was reporting, “Some immigrant U.S. Army reservists and recruits who enlisted in the military with a promised path to citizenship are being abruptly discharged.”
While the AP was not able to provide information on the exact number of soldiers who have been “booted” from the Army, immigration attorneys give the number as “more than 40.”
More than 5,000 immigrants were recruited into the special program in 2016, and an estimated 10,000 are currently serving, according to the AP.
They joined the military through the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI) program, a program with a complex, ever-changing history and eventually suspended, originally created to attract immigrants with badly needed skills, especially medical specialists and fluent speakers of sought-after languages, with promises that such service would lead to U.S. citizenship
In general, the immigrant recruits have been more cost-effective, outperforming their fellow soldiers in the areas of attrition, performance, education and promotions, according to a recently released review by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research institution.
The AP report has generated strong criticism including from Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich who called the decision “yet another low” by the White House, “a decision [which] must be reversed now, for the sake of our military, to show that America keeps its word and to uphold the very values we claim to stand for,” according to the Huffington Post.
CODA:
The DoD “Fact Sheet” explaining the MAVNI limited pilot program states in part:
Non-citizens have served in the military since the Revolutionary War. The Lodge Act of 1950 permitted non-citizen Eastern Europeans to enlist between 1950 and 1959. Additionally, the United States officially began recruiting Filipino nationals into the Navy in the late 1940s, when it signed the Military Bases Agreement of 1947 allowing U.S. military bases in the Philippines. In total, over 35,000 Filipinos enlisted in the Navy through the program between 1952 and 1991.
Today, about 5,000 legal permanent resident aliens (green card holders) enlist each year. Law ensures that the sacrifice of non-citizens during a time of national need is met with an opportunity for early citizenship, to recognize their contribution and sacrifice.
In fact, today’s service members are eligible for expedited citizenship under a July 2002 Executive Order and the military services have worked closely with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to streamline citizenship processing for service members. Since Sept. 11, 2001, over 109,250 members of the Armed Forces have attained their citizenship by serving this nation.
Lead photo: DoD.
