At a Chicago field hearing on Monday, Senate Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin, D-Ill., promised to fight to legalize those illegal aliens who join in the U.S. military. In the meantime Durbin said he's "confident" they will be allowed to serve soon.
“If you are willing to sign up in our military and risk your life for America, you should be given that opportunity,” Durbin said. “I am confident that Dreamers will soon have the chance to serve honorably in the armed forces. “On that day America will be [a] stronger and better country.”
Durbin has been pushing to include a measure like the ENLIST Act in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). That measure would enable illegal aliens who entered the United States before age 15 to join the U.S. military and receive legal permanent residency after serving.
Testifying at the hearing, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., said "every institution in America, including our military, must work around the inability of our federal government and the U.S. House of Representatives to fix our immigration system." He called on the Defense Department to start enlisting those illegal aliens who received a two year stay of deportation and work permit under the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. "DACA is an important first step in implementing modern immigration policies that reflect our values and strengthen our nation," Gutierrez said. "Next we must fully incorporate DACA recipients and their families and the millions of immigrants who live among us into our society."
Also at the hearing, a Pentagon official said the Administration may issue a directive that allows DACA recipients to enlist in the military by this summer. Jessica Wright, the Acting Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness at the Defense Department, said her agency is exploring an expansion of the "Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI)" pilot program to enable DACA illegal aliens to enlist. Wright said the Pentagon "is not doing this in a vacuum" since it is working with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the White House. "We are joined at the hip with the White House," she said, "because, as you know, our president is very concerned and is also very 'pro' when it comes to reforming immigration."
It is questionable whether illegal aliens are needed in the military now. One recruiter told the Kansas City Star that his office once needed to sign up 16 to 20 soldiers per month to meet recruitment goals. Today, he can get by with 10 to 12. “We’re turning down twice as many as before. The Star reported that four of every five adults who seek to join the military in 2014 do not make the cut, and that the Army and Navy will both hit their 2014 recruitment targets.
In February, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel unveiled plans to reduce the Army’s active duty strength from its current force of 520,000 to 490,000 by autumn 2015. The Department has already been downsizing as active military personnel return from deployment in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The Department of Defense estimates that 1.5 million service members will be leaving the military and looking for civilian jobs over the next five years.
Earlier this month, a group of 16 influential military leaders signed onto a letter sent to House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon to express their opposition to adding either Rep. Jeff Denham's (R-Calif.) ENLIST Act or Rep. Mike Coffman's (R-Colo.) Military Enlistment Act to the NDAA. The letter said, “We believe it a serious mistake to open military service to those known to have violated the laws of the United States. Whether they have done so by coming to this country illegally and living here in violation of immigration statutes, either at their own initiative or as a result of the actions of family members, they have acted in a manner inconsistent with the oath to support and defend the Constitution that they will be required to swear upon enlisting." The American Legion in April said it is opposed including the ENLIST Act in the NDAA, calling it an unacceptable “amnesty.”
The House is taking up the NDAA this week but Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, today said that legislation is the wrong place for the ENLIST Act. “We have supported it in the past, but trying to do this on the national defense authorization bill seemed to us to be an inappropriate place to do it,” Boehner said. He was non-committal when asked if the ENLIST Act might get a stand-alone vote, saying there had been “discussions about that, but no decisions…Until the president gives us some reason, some confidence that we can trust him to implement an immigration reform bill, we don’t have much to talk about.”
