Policy on a Slippery Slope
     The Department of Defense announced last week a new policy that will allow illegal immigrants living in the United States to enlist in the US armed forces and be eligible for an accelerated path to US citizenship as a result.  The program, Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI), will recruit illegal immigrants who came to the United States with their parents before the age of sixteen.  The program is capped at 1,500 recruits per year.
     On one hand, this initiative can be viewed as an initiative by the Obama administration to ease pressure on immigrants and shore up its political support from the immigrant community.  On the other hand, it can be viewed as a pernicious means to shore up recruiting into a stressed All-Volunteer Force.  The reality is that the  US military is knowingly enlisting felons into its ranks because, to some extent, as Charles Moskos (a respected sociologist at Northwestern University) wrote in 1988, "we can't get enough middle class kids to die for their country.  This is the next step". 
     One might ask, "is the All-Volunteer Force working and will it work in the future"?  An alternative question is, "what if we had a war and no one showed up on our side"?