OPINION:
For one side of the immigration debate, the goal is to hand out as many citizenship cards as possible. This “path to citizenship” is more a path toward dependency, in which illegal aliens take advantage of various welfare benefits and presumably show their gratitude by voting for the Democratic politicians who keep the goodies flowing.
Rep. Mike Coffman, Colorado Republican, would rather foster independence among newly minted American citizens. He has proposed a path to citizenship for young people who were brought to this country illegally as children, through no fault of their own. As long as they’ve and graduated from high school here and stayed out of trouble, they’d receive legal residency in exchange for honorable military service. Currently, illegal aliens are not eligible to enlist.
The left’s version of amnesty is the Dream Act, which does include the possibility of earning citizenship through service to one’s country in uniform. The difference is the Dream Act’s military path is essentially superfluous, because citizenship can be easily obtained by signing up for two years’ worth of taxpayer-subsidized college classes. Graduation is optional.
Mr. Coffman, who enlisted in the Army at age 17 and after college transferred to the Marines and served in the first Gulf war and the Iraq war, observes that there’s no higher demonstration of American citizenship than serving in the military, where the core values are loyalty, duty, respect, honor and integrity. The goal of immigration policy should be to instill these values in all new citizens.
Mr. Coffman’s Military Enlistment Opportunity Act would open a new pool of potential recruits, which is no small consideration, given a November 2009 study that found that 75 percent of young adults cannot join the military. The report from Mission: Readiness, a group comprised of retired generals, admirals and civilian military leaders, notes that most of those 17- to 24-year-olds are unable to enlist owing to a number of factors, including failure to graduate from high school, a criminal record, a history of drug abuse and a lack of physical fitness. While the report, “Ready, Willing And Unable to Serve” concluded the solution was yet more federal education spending, the problems it documents in filling the ranks of an all-voluntary military merits careful consideration.
Citizenship should be earned, not handed out as a gift by politicians seeking an Election Day quid pro quo. People generally value something more when it’s earned than when it’s simply handed to them, so there’s merit in Mr. Coffman’s idea.
On the other hand, the plan shares the difficulty that plagues all forms of amnesty. Providing a benefit to the children of parents that broke America’s immigration laws encourages future generations to do the same, crossing the border in the hopes of obtaining future rewards for their own offspring.
That said, if there’s a need for compromise as the immigration reform debate heats up, there are a lot worse ways to go than making citizens out of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.
The Washington Times
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