How America's broken immigration system is failing the military

Letting legal immigrants into our nation's army would give them a path to citizenship — and boost sputtering recruitment numbers

U.S. Army
(Image credit: (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson))

America's hopelessly gridlocked immigration system is undermining more than our national economy — it's also knee-capping our national security.

The reason behind these twin failures is the same: the Rushmore-sized obstacles our immigration system creates in the recruitment of qualified foreigners. But when it comes to military recruitment, the irony is that while previous presidents have used their statutory authority to draft immigrants against their will, President Obama hasn't used his to recruit even willing immigrants, something he could change via the executive initiative on immigration he's planning to unveil soon.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.