From Independent, a British online news outlet on 6July2018:
US Army quietly discharges immigrant recruits despite promise of citizenship.
Originally an AP article, this story was quickly picked up by other outlets and social media. I find this story problematic… but then again, I am cynical and was in the middle of a text conversation with the 12-year-old about the meaning of life, so cynical AND philosophic has been my present and recent mode.
This trend is something that has been getting progressively more pronounced over the last few years… and it accelerated after my research into public opinion. I would even venture to add “bitter and crotchety” to the list of attributes, but my bitterness is dampened by my visceral optimism.
Yeah… I put those two words together.
Just for the sake of clarity: I am neither a Republican, nor am I a Democrat. I think that both parties are vital to this trifecta of stupidity that seems to be the rage nowadays: the Media, the Bipartisan bickering, and the general public.
Ok, so… my issues with the article as previously stated:
“…unclear how many…”
“…aware of more than 40…”
[Bonus due to quiet times]
“To become citizens, they need to have an honourable service designation, which can sometimes come after just a few days at boot camp.”
180 is more than a few, but this is arguing semantics.
“The Pentagon and the Army said that, due to the pending litigation, they were unable to explain the discharges or respond to questions about whether there have been policy changes in any of the military branches.”
Pending litigation. I get that the concern is that there may have been a lack of justification for their dismissal, but damn… the media can’t wait for the final decision to be made before jumping to broad and speculative conclusions?
Seven links… and they all go back to the Independent. To me, this is a huge problem.
Going to the AP article:
“All had signed enlistment contracts and taken an Army oath, Stock said. Many were reservists who had been attending unit drills, receiving pay and undergoing training, while others had been in a ‘delayed entry’ program, she said.”
The process for Reservists differs greatly from Active, in terms of the beginning of their enlistments. Both articles fail to mention Reservists in the title, which would foster a different reaction. This lack of specificity is also bothersome.
For further reading (and with the conspicuously absent links to external .gov or respectable .edu sites):
https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/Naturalization-Honorable-Service-Certification.pdf
“This memorandum provides formal guidance regarding the certification of honorable service of members of the Select Reserve of the Ready Reserve and members of the active components of the military or naval forces of the United States for the purpose of supporting Service Member applications for naturalization under section 1440 of Title 8, U.S. Code.”
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1440
8 U.S. Code § 1440
A bit older, but interestingly relevant in terms of the recruiting process at the time of publication (2005):
“Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) personnel submit an Entrance National Agency Check to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for all individuals enlisting in the Armed Forces. It is an employment trustworthiness investigation that does not qualify applicants for security clearances.” (p. 27)
https://www.cna.org/cna_files/pdf/D0025768.A2.pdf
Again, a bit dated (2011)… but this reinforces some of the points made in the previous source.
“Recruiters also said that the services do not provide any special instructions with respect to recruiting non-citizens—instead, recruiters receive guidance on recruiting in general.” (p. 19)
Even more interesting is the study of attrition:
“Across the entire sample of accessions, we find that 1 out of every 25 non-citizen recruits attrites within 3 months, compared with twice that rate among citizen recruits. By 36 and 48 months, attrition rates among non-citizen recruits increase to roughly 1 in 5 (16.1 percent) and 1 in 6 (18.2 percent), respectively. But, these rates are still considerably lower than the rates for citizen recruits—roughly 1 in 4 (28.4 percent) by 36 months and 1 in 3 (31.9) by 48 months.” (p. 26)
553 words so far, and I haven’t even started to bog down my aged laptop with more current data (I tend to favor slightly older sources as they usually age well in the academic environment and it takes a bit of time to get accurate information for yesterday when today is still fresh).
If you made it this far, I commend you and hope that you don’t view this as a personal attack on you or your ideas; rather this is my problem with crappy reporting: that this should have ALREADY been done prior to publication.
WITH external sources.
[Edit for my own personal blog and continuity]
The storm took off since the original discussion on 6Jul18 prompted this post. The Twitter feed of the original article as well as the two journalists who reported the story quickly became the focal point for both sides of the debate. Quickly on the heels of the first story, the AP released a subsequent article about a similar “sudden discharge” of another immigrant…
Fishing for emotions with the net and hauling in quite a catch each time. This is not news.
…And all of this is no surprise.
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milsurpwriter 
Is it sad that my first reaction to this (and most) stories is “There has to be more to this…”
When I was in (the 1980’s) we had plenty of non-citizen sailors, mostly Phillipino. They were highly motivated and very good sailors. I did notice that few of them ended up in Submarines. I never really wondered why not?
At any rate, the release of people who were brought in initially because they had some “special skill” almost always ends up with downstream issues. Whatever the number is, and I have read many of the streams back to the AP story I can’t seem to nail down the number specifically, in any case, based on the numbers it appears to be a small number of highly specialized people, not a general dismissal of all non-citizens.
This does not surprise me because highly specialized people in that position would tend to have background issues that might not be compatible with military service.
And before people launch at me for saying that, remember that I had to go through a DSI background check that included interviews with people I didn’t even know that I knew, as well as extensive mental testing and then constant monitoring that continued after I left the Navy. Not everybody can be anything and everything in the military.
And if the only qualification that a person has is some singular “highly specialized skill” that comes with other issues not compatible with service, then they should be discharged.
For all of that, I have come to believe that most news stories in today’s media have a slant, and while it’s almost always easy to see, it’s really pathetic that we are compelled to automatically assume that the story is incomplete reporting as opposed to biased “reporting.”
And that is on both sides, btw.
I once sat on a writers committee with a reporter from the Stockton Record, who informed the High School Seniors to whom we were speaking that “It’s easy to write a story so that the reader comes to “the correct conclusion” (his actual words).
As appalled as I was, the telling part was that I was it… the only one who thought that was a bad thing.
So in no way am I surprised that ALL media has become – hmmm – maybe not “fake,” but certainly it has become what I call “green screened.” It’s all in the presentation.
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“… to write a story so that the reader comes to the ‘correct conclusion…'”
This is a disturbing but frequent attitude in most reporting, unfortunately.
I feel like I am one of the few people who are actively considering the “yellow journalism” of the past to be somewhat of a template for contemporary news.
Fear mongering… partial representation/presentation… and the motivation of attention overruling ethics and facts. All of these things, paired with a compliant and emotional audience will not bode well over the next decade. After all, we see how mired we are in Afghanistan as well as Iraq/Syria… and that was the result of those exact things. Few saw the disaster unfolding then… as few see it now.
Do I think that this one article is the harbinger of doom?
No. However, the precursor to any potentially terminal illness is usually smaller symptoms that are easily missed or disregarded. The more folks buy into nonsense reporting like this, the more their attention is diverted from the repercussions of emotional response and/or other issues that require attention and action…
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