Trump says no to citizenship for soldiers
Even conservatives have historically embraced programs that trade military service for naturalization
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The U.S. military has begun kicking out immigrants for whom service offered a pathway to citizenship. According to a recent report from the Associated Press, dozens of enlistees—part of a program called MAVNI (Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest)—have already been discharged. That’s in addition to hundreds of recruits who had their contracts abruptly canceled last fall.
MAVNI, a program started in 2008, opened the door for immigrants who were in the country legally (including DACA recipients) to enroll in the military and, in reward for their service, have their citizenship fast-tracked.
Though the exact scope of the dismissals is unclear—the Pentagon has not supplied a number, and some enlistees say they’ve been told only that they failed an unspecified background check—the tightening restrictions on immigrants in the military (which goes well beyond this latest report) fits perfectly with the administration’s anti-immigrant and nativist policies.
Historically, for immigrants excluded from the full rights of citizenship because of their race, the military has been the most powerful proving ground for their citizenship claims. From Asian Americans who won citizenship after serving in Europe in World War I to African Americans who won support for civil rights after returning from World War II, military service created an almost irrefutable case for citizenship.
American racists sometimes still fought those claims, but they led to real advances—which is exactly why the Trump administration would aim to end such a program.
The case of Asian Americans and World War I
Perhaps the most striking case of military citizenship featured Asian immigrants in the early 20th century. This was a time when immigration from most parts of the world went largely unrestricted, but Asian immigrants faced profound barriers. Chinese immigration had been halted in 1882, through the Chinese Exclusion Act, and that ban expanded to include Japan in 1907 and most of the rest of Asia in 1917.
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