The path to citizenship for those who put on American uniform has narrowed

2020/05/04 Leave a comment

Of note. One of the ironies is that Canada modelled a similar provision in the 2014 C-24 citizenship legislation after the US approach (not repealed in C-6):

When Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a Prussian officer helping the Continental Army, asked for a translator at Valley Forge to address some troops during America’s revolutionary war, the story goes that he was told there was no need. This particular group were immigrants and spoke German. Colonial militias offered state citizenship to soldiers. The Continental Congress granted citizenship even to enemy soldiers who switched sides. The baron was later given American citizenship for helping to see off the Brits.

Since 1952, immigrants have been able to apply for citizenship after one year of honourable service during peacetime. In wartime they have been able to become Americans almost as soon as they join up. Since the September 11th attacks in 2001, more than 100,000 service members have become citizens. But this avenue to citizenship is no longer assured.

In order for the naturalisation process to begin, the Department of Defence has to sign an honourable-service certification form. Without it, the Citizenship and Immigration Services (uscis) will not consider the applicant. In October 2017 the department adopted stricter vetting; as a result, claims a new lawsuit, it is very difficult for service members to be naturalised speedily. This policy change is “a departure from pretty close to 200 years of us history”, says Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank.

Ange Samma, along with five other active-duty service members, and the American Civil Liberties Union (aclu), an advocacy group, filed a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Defence on April 24th. Private Samma enlisted in 2018 and is serving in South Korea. Originally from Burkina Faso, he came to America as a teenager. According to the suit, it took multiple requests for him to receive the honourable-service certification form. When he finally did, uscis rejected it as his officers had not filled it out properly. Without citizenship, he cannot get security clearance for some army work. He is not alone. Scarlet Kim, an aclulawyer, says that thousands of service members are having similar difficulties.

In 2018 there was a 70% drop in naturalisation applicants from the armed forces after the extra vetting was put in place. The lawsuit says the servicemen would have been naturalised faster if they had taken the lengthy civilian route. Their applications are being rejected at a higher rate than civilian ones. Margaret Stock, a retired lieutenant-colonel and now an immigration lawyer, says some serving soldiers are placed in deportation proceedings by the same government that they volunteered to fight for, before the application process has been completed.

Some countries are loosening citizen-enlistment rules because of military-recruitment problems, but only a few make service a path to citizenship as America does. This distinction helps with recruiting. Without immigrants the army would have failed to meet its goals nearly every year between 2002 and 2013. A Department of Defence report in 2016 found that non-citizens perform better, have lower attrition rates and are more likely to have medical and it expertise than their citizen counterparts. Not only do they make useful recruits to the armed forces; they would make good citizens, too.■

Source: The path to citizenship for those who put on American uniform has narrowed

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Citizenship For Military Service Program Under Fire : NPR

2017/07/13 Leave a comment

The Conservative government introduced a comparable provision in C-24 (residency requirements were waived for military personnel who had served three years with an honourable release):

A debate has broken out at the Pentagon and in Congress over a proposal to dismantle an 8-year-old program that gives fast-track citizenship to immigrant soldiers who were recruited because they have critical skills in languages and medicine.

More than 4,000 immigrant soldiers recruited through the program — mostly from China and South Korea — are serving in uniform, including on overseas tours. Another 4,000 recruits have enlisted and are awaiting training.

The program is known as MAVNI, for Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest. It was frozen last year amid security concerns about inadequate vetting of the recruits.

Pentagon and national intelligence officials say the recruits could have connections to foreign intelligence services or become insider threats, according to an internal memo obtained by NPR. The officials also said it would be both expensive and time-consuming to investigate these recruits more carefully.

Those officials are now proposing additional scrutiny of soldiers already serving and dropping those who have not yet shipped to basic training or been assigned a military unit. Some could be deported because their visas have expired.

A Pentagon spokesman, Johnny Michael, would not comment on the memo or the program.

Win-win or security risk?

The proposal has stoked a debate over how to balance national security concerns with the need for specialized skills and how to keep faith with recruits who pledged to serve their adopted country.

Several Defense Department officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss the program publicly, said mismanagement has been a problem.

In some cases, the officials said, the military didn’t use the MAVNI recruits effectively because they weren’t placed in jobs in which they used their language skills. And some recruits have been investigated for suspected ties to foreign spy agencies, one official said.

By some metrics, the program — which grants citizenship in exchange for eight years of honorable military service — has been successful.

According to a Pentagon breakdown, soldiers recruited through the program have educational levels that exceed the Army average, and their re-enlistment rates are higher than soldiers who are already citizens.

Most of the recruits with foreign language skills speak Chinese and Korean. The rest speak about three dozen other languages, ranging from Arabic and Thai to Indonesian, Turkish and Swahili.

The program also helps fill the medical ranks. About two-thirds of dentists in the Army Reserve are part of the MAVNI program. Others serve as nurses or hold other jobs in the Army Medical Corps.

One-third of the recruits have been in the United States for at least three or four years, according to the Pentagon’s breakdown, with one-quarter living in the U.S. for more than seven years.

One of those recruits is Jeevan Pendli, 34, who came to the U.S. from India on a student visa, earning a master’s degree from Carnegie-Mellon University. He stayed on a visa for tech workers and co-founded a company that helps people with chronic illnesses manage their health.

And last year he decided to join the Army, inspired after running the Marine Corps Marathon and seeing competitors in wheelchairs and using prosthetics.

“Things seemed fine when we signed and did the oath in May,” Pendli told NPR, “and it just fizzled out in a couple of weeks or months.”

Like some 2,000 other MAVNI recruits, Pendli is still waiting to be shipped to basic training.

That long wait is more than just an annoyance. If a recruit doesn’t make it to Army basic training by 730 days after signing a contract, the recruit “times out” and is kicked out before serving. Hundreds will reach that deadline by the end of the year. And each month after that hundreds more will “time out.”

No consensus in Congress

“Military recruits in the MAVNI program should not have to wonder whether the United States will honor the contract they signed,” wrote Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis.

“If we fail to hold up the contracts we made with MAVNI applicants, this will not only have a significantly deleterious effect on recruiting, it will also be met with a strong, swift Congressional reaction.”

But other lawmakers say there are legitimate concerns.

“Even with the MAVNI program, where it’s supposed to meet some of the vital national interests, the program has been replete with problems to include foreign infiltration, so much so that the Department of Defense is seeking to suspend the program due to those concerns,” said Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., a retired Army officer, during a recent hearing on the defense policy bill.

“And I can’t really discuss some of that here in this setting, but there are some major issues when it comes to vetting,” said Russell, who serves on the Armed Services Committee.

In the next few weeks, Mattis is expected to receive final recommendations from Pentagon personnel and intelligence officials about the way ahead.

Source: Citizenship For Military Service Program Under Fire : NPR

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Serving in foreign militaries

2014/07/24 Leave a comment

Serving in the IDF or other foreign militaries raises sensitive issues related to dual loyalty (see my earlier article Which Country Would You Die For?).

Serving in a foreign military implies a greater loyalty to that country, given the risk of ultimate sacrifice.

But serving in a foreign military, with its own discipline, regulations and codes, is distinct from extremist irregular forces without such developed frameworks (even if there are some common elements).

In the former in democratic societies the broad frameworks and values are largely similar. Needless to say, the same could not be said for those fighting for ISIS or equivalents:

Two Americans serving as lone soldiers were among 13 Israeli soldiers and scores of Palestinians over the weekend who died during the first major ground battle in two weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Max Steinberg, a 24-year-old sharpshooter in the Golani Brigade, was killed as well as Nissim Sean Carmeli, 21, from South Padre Island, Texas.

There were about 5,500 lone soldiers serving in the military in 2012, according to the Israel Defence Forces. Groups for families of lone soldiers, like the support group in Toronto, have recently started in Los Angeles and other cities, providing a support network as the fighting intensifies.

“Lone soldiers are a kind of star in Israel,” Jewish Journal reported. “For Israeli kids, army service is a rite of passage. But because it is a choice for the young members of the Diaspora who re-direct their own life paths to protect Israel, those enlistees are given a hero’s welcome — and a lifetime of Shabbat dinner invitations from their fellow soldiers, who become their surrogate families.”

‘I just want her to get through this in one piece’: Canadians serving with Israeli military amid Gaza conflict, parents say

And in LaPresse, a fairly critical look at Canadian Ambassador Vivian Bercovici’s one-sided perspective as seen through her tweets.

To be fair, she is simply expressing the Government’s policy on Israel and Palestine but given that she formally is the Ambassador to both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, she does seem to be even more one-sided than necessary:

Norman Spector, qui a été ambassadeur du Canada en Israël de 1992 à 1995 et chef de cabinet du l’ancien premier ministre Brian Mulroney, s’est dit surpris du «parti pris» de ces déclarations. «Cela me surprend de lire ses tweets et retweets», a-t-il affirmé.

«Par contre, à mon époque, l’ambassadeur était responsable pour les relations avec Israël et pour les relations avec les Palestiniens, ce qui n’est pas le cas aujourd’hui, si je ne me trompe pas», a-t-il ajouté.

Le bureau du ministre des Affaires étrangères, John Baird, a confirmé que cette dernière responsabilité incombe au Bureau de représentation du Canada auprès de l’Autorité palestinienne.

Le ministre John Baird n’a pas bronché lorsque La Presse lui a demandé de réagir. «Elle est là pour représenter les intérêts canadiens, les valeurs et la position canadienne, et elle le fait très bien», a déclaré un porte-parole par courriel. «Elle a tout notre appui.»

Des experts n’ont pas été particulièrement surpris en lisant ces propos. «Elle a été choisie au départ parce qu’elle avait ces convictions», a souligné Rex Brynen, professeur de sciences politiques à l’Université McGill.

«Je ne crois pas que cette distinction [entre diplomatie et activisme politique] existe réellement, a quant à lui noté le professeur Roland Paris, de l’Université d’Ottawa. Les diplomates ont plusieurs fonctions, et l’une d’elles est d’être un défenseur des positions de leur gouvernement.»

http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/politique-canadienne/201407/22/01-4785985-israel-les-tweets-de-lambassadrice-du-canada-font-jaser.php

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