Immigrants In The Military
BY:Miriam Rodriguez & Luis Mendoza
The issue....
Only a small part of undocumented immigrants will have the opportunity to serve the military with a valuable visa. Many immigrants are being rejected to be part of the military because of being undocumented. The america's broken immigration system is failing the military. Immigrants do not have the opportunity to be recruited because of lack of documents or not having a green card.
Facts
About 8,000 noncitizens enlist in the military every year, but most get rejected for not qualifying. Immigrants serving in the military bring special skills like language and cultural differences and are less likely than their U.S.-born counterparts to leave the military before completing a tour of duty. In light of Veterans Day this issue carefully looks at how immigrants have historically played and continue to play a key role in U.S. military readiness. Military service has historically been a tool for socializing immigrants to the American culture and way of life.
The effect on personnel....
The effect on personnel is that only 5% of immigrants are serving on active-duty personnel. The top two countries of origin for foreign-born military personnel in the U.S. are the Philippines and Mexico. Almost 11 percent of hispanic are serving mostly in the Army Forces. Which means that many immigrants are not being treated as they should to be part of the military.
Americans Point Of View...
Americans Point of view is that many americans do not have the qualifications they need as immigrants do but the issue there is that the military cannot recruit many immigrants who actually qualified. Many immigrants fail the military's basic fitness, that's about 70% of them. Why? because of lack of high school diploma, drug use, being obesity, or even body piercings and also visible tattoos. The main reason immigrants can't enlist themselves is because they need a green card but can take a lot of time to get.
Military's Point of View....
In the military's point of view, many immigrants should have the right to serve into the military because most of them are born in the U.S and also they have work their entire life in the U.S which they should be able to relist them in the Army Forces. Many of this immigrants are more prepared than others but what stops them from doing more things in the military is being undocumented and not being able to recruit them.
Resources/Programs That Help....
One of the programs President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which could give millions of qualified undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and would cancel them from deportation actions and extend work permits to them.