A senior defense official expressed hope today that a provision in the stalled immigration bill that would have allowed some undocumented aliens to join the military won’t fall off the radar screen.The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, provision in the immigration bill was expected to help boost military recruiting, Bill Carr, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, said today during a telephone conference with veterans’ group representatives.
The DREAM provision offered a way for high-achieving children of undocumented or illegal residents to join the military and, ultimately, become citizens, Carr explained.
“In other words, if you had come across (the border) with your parents, yet you were a minor child and have been in the U.S. school system for a number of years, then you could be eligible to enlist,” he said. “And at the end of that enlistment, then you would be eligible to become a citizen.”Certain non-citizens have been eligible to enlist in the military since the Revolutionary War. Today, about 35,000 non-citizens serve in the military, and about 8,000 permanent resident aliens enlist every year, said Marine Maj. Stuart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman.
7 comments:
“And at the end of that enlistment, then you would be eligible to become a citizen.”
I don't know what to say. I feel sorry for anyone who makes this choice.
We have become a nation that employs mercenaries.
Does this cheapen what it means to be an American citizen?
I don't know. Was the meaning of being an American citizen expensive to begin with?
"I don't know. Was the meaning of being an American citizen expensive to begin with?" Intellectual Insurgent said...
Apparently it was expensive for those people willing to swim swift rivers, run through minefields and float across the ocean on truck tires to get here.
True. It's expensive to those who weren't born with it and completely abused and taken for granted by those who were.
This program is another divide and conquer weapon whereby White power plays off one group of poor Brown people against the other.
The reenlistment bonus is $ 20.000
Whats the difference between paying one of our soldiers that, or giving 20.000 to the family of a suicide bomber, like Saddam used to do ?
There isn't one.
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