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The military is kicking out foreign recruits it needs -- for having foreign ties
Military
The military is kicking out foreign recruits it needs — for having foreign ties
By Alex Horton
General assignment reporter covering national and breaking news
July 30 at 2:49 PM
In the past month, the Pentagon booted two Chinese recruits from the enlistment process because of their dead grandfathers, who lived very different lives.
One recruit’s grandfather, whom he never met, served in the communist military. Another recruit was removed from the program after drilling for three years because of the polar opposite — Zicheng Li’s grandfather fought against, and was tortured by, China’s Communist Party, defense officials wrote.
Screening documents obtained by The Washington Post detailing reasons that these and other foreign recruits were removed from the military reveal a pattern of canceled enlistments and failed screenings for fact-of-life events and, often, simply for existing as foreigners.
Immigrant enlistees have been cut loose for being the children of foreign parents or for having family ties to their native government or military. In some cases, they have relatives who served in militaries closely allied with the United States. Those removals raise questions about the Pentagon’s screening process and why it has weeded out precisely the recruits defense officials said they needed.
The program was even named in that fashion — Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest, or MAVNI, which enlisted more than 10,400 foreign troops in the past decade, with the promise of fast-tracked naturalization that would take weeks. Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Arabic and other speakers have been in demand by defense officials.
....
Alex Horton is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. He previously covered the military and national security for Stars and Stripes, and served in Iraq as an Army infantryman. Follow https://twitter.com/AlexHortonTX
The military is kicking out foreign recruits it needs — for having foreign ties
By Alex Horton
General assignment reporter covering national and breaking news
July 30 at 2:49 PM
In the past month, the Pentagon booted two Chinese recruits from the enlistment process because of their dead grandfathers, who lived very different lives.
One recruit’s grandfather, whom he never met, served in the communist military. Another recruit was removed from the program after drilling for three years because of the polar opposite — Zicheng Li’s grandfather fought against, and was tortured by, China’s Communist Party, defense officials wrote.
Screening documents obtained by The Washington Post detailing reasons that these and other foreign recruits were removed from the military reveal a pattern of canceled enlistments and failed screenings for fact-of-life events and, often, simply for existing as foreigners.
Immigrant enlistees have been cut loose for being the children of foreign parents or for having family ties to their native government or military. In some cases, they have relatives who served in militaries closely allied with the United States. Those removals raise questions about the Pentagon’s screening process and why it has weeded out precisely the recruits defense officials said they needed.
The program was even named in that fashion — Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest, or MAVNI, which enlisted more than 10,400 foreign troops in the past decade, with the promise of fast-tracked naturalization that would take weeks. Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Arabic and other speakers have been in demand by defense officials.
....
Alex Horton is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. He previously covered the military and national security for Stars and Stripes, and served in Iraq as an Army infantryman. Follow https://twitter.com/AlexHortonTX