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Now, fight your way to become a US
citizen in 6 months
US Army courts
skilled immigrants with temporary visas
WSN Network
Washington: For
decades, high-skilled professionals from across the world,
particularly India, have fought their way to US citizenship through
legal immigration channels — a process that can take up to a decade
or more.
Now, Uncle Sam is making it easy. Fight your way — literally
— to American citizenship in as little as six months.
In a far reaching proposal, the
US
military will open its doors to skilled immigrant guest workers
(such as those who hold H1-B visas) who have lived in the
US
for a minimum of two years. The move is aimed at offsetting the poor
recruitment intake from traditional sources at a time the US
military is stretched thin by deployments in
Iraq
and the Af-Pak theater.
US
Green card holders, also known as permanent residents, have long
been eligible to enlist in the military. But this is the first time
since the Vietnam War that the armed forces will be open to
temporary immigrants and offer them a path to citizenship, a move
that in some ways amounts to outsourcing its wars.
The program comes at a time when skilled immigrants in the US
are facing a slowing job market, offering them an avenue to turn
potential pink slips into not just Green cards, but citizenship — if
they are so obsessed about their American Dream.
A pilot program that will take in 1000 immigrant recruits
nationwide will begin in
New York City in
the first year, according the New York Times, which first reported
the development on Sunday.
By going to the pool of skilled immigrants, recruiters
actually expect to improve the quality of US military personnel,
since most foreign skilled guest workers typically have more
education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than
many Americans who enlist. This is expected to help the military to
fill shortages in medical care, language interpretation and field
intelligence analysis.
The program is particularly germane to Indian guest workers
who constitute the largest segment of skilled foreign workers in the
US, and although
Spanish-speaking Latinos constitute the largest group of immigrants,
they are largely unskilled.
The one-year pilot program in New York City that will recruit
550 personnel (rest 450 will comes from across the country)
explicitly excludes Spanish speakers, while being open to immigrants
who speak one or more of 35 languages, including Hindi/Urdu, Tamil,
Arabic, Chinese, Nepalese, Pashto etc.
US officials have
said in the past that they sorely lacked field intelligence
operatives with requisite language skills to be deployed in the Af-Pak
theater.
The army’s program will also include about 300 medical
professionals to be recruited nationwide. If the pilot program,
which is restricted to the army and some other agencies, succeeds,
it will expand for all branches of the military.
18
February 2009
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