Pentagon's immigrant recruit program stymied

Stricter Trump administration immigration policies have stymied Pentagon plans to restart a program that allowed thousands of people with critical medical or Asian and African language skills to join the military and become American citizens, according to several US officials.

The decade-old program has been on hold since 2016 amid concerns that immigrant recruits were not being screened well enough, and security threats were slipping through the system. Defense officials shored up the vetting process, and planned to relaunch the program earlier this month.

But there was an unexpected barrier when Homeland Security officials said they would not be able to protect new immigrant recruits from being deported when their temporary visas expired after they signed a contract to join the military, the US officials said. They were not authorised to publicly describe internal discussions and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The program is called Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program, or MAVNI.

The plan to restart it was backed by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who believes that noncitizens can bring key skills, language abilities, and cultural knowledge to the military.

Mattis, a combat veteran of multiple war tours, has fought with and commanded foreign nationals, and he believes their service adds to the lethality of America's fighting force, according to the officials.

The Pentagon chief told reporters late last month that the program is designed to enlist immigrants with needed skills.

"We need and want every qualified patriot willing to serve and able to serve," Mattis said. At the time, he said the department was working diligently to address the security screening problems.

When asked about the latest developments, Air Force Maj Carla Gleason, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said, "the unique skill sets these individuals bring is one of the reasons the US military is the world's premier fighting force." She had no comment on the internal discussions to relaunch the program.

The officials familiar with the discussions said Homeland Security told the Pentagon that it would not be able sign any agreement blocking the deportation of the immigrant recruits brought in under the program.

In previous years, the US Citizenship and Immigration Service used an informal process to give MAVNI recruits protection when their temporary or student visas expired because they were entering military service.

In addition, Congress included new restrictions in the 2019 defense bill that limit each military service to 1,000 such recruits per year.

President Donald Trump has made tighter controls on immigration, both legal and illegal, an important element of his administration.

Asked about the issue, a Homeland Security official said recruits without legal immigration status would be subject to deportation, but each case is reviewed individually. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Over the past 10 years, the military services have recruited more than 10,000 immigrants through the program. In recent years, however, the program has been mired in controversy amid growing concerns about security threats and struggles to develop a proper screening process.

According to court documents, more than 20 people in the program have been the subject of FBI or Pentagon counterintelligence or criminal investigations since 2013.

Gleason said the Defense Department suspended the program in 2016 after several classified assessments concluded that it "was vulnerable to an unacceptable level of risk from insider threats such as espionage, terrorism, and other criminal activity."
But he added that the Army must "exercise due diligence, to make sure we understand who is coming into our ranks and just do that. The process is never quick enough, certainly for them, and for me as well."