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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   26075 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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I feel like military service for citizenship isn’t a bad trade at all. Presumably the military is a strong enough insinuation to integrate all types of people. Additionally, someone willing to spend years in the military is likely someone we would want to keep in the country.

The first problem would come with other laws on the books. Meaning that one citizen can bring whole families along. Wife, kids, parents grandparents etc. this makes one successful crossing into potentially 15 visas etc. and it doesn’t allow for discretion as I understand it, so not only mustwe accept all of these visa requests, but we cannot vet those people coming.

The second problem is that it turns the military into a jobs program. Yes the military can probably integrate people into mainstream society. But in the meantime, you’re dealing with all kinds of problems that might well make it much more difficult to fulfill the main purpose of the army— fighting in wars. This could come in the form of language problems (it generally takes years for a person to become competent enough to use a foreign language as the primary means of communication) cultural issues (diet restrictions, cleanliness issues, taboos) and general attitudes towards authority. A small number of immigrants can probably integrate, but if 15% of your military isn’t able to speak English, doesn’t have the same culture as the rest of the units, and has discipline issues, that’s going to hurt your ability to fight.

The third issue is loyalty. What’s necessary is crossing the border and joining the military. There’s not really much vetting here, especially if the person uses a false name. This potentially lets foreign agents spy on us (we’d teach them how we teach our soldiers), some of our tactics, how our weapons work, and so on. This is all invaluable to anyone worried that the Americans want to go to war with them. Of course the equipment is valuable and a soldier might sell it. Or an enterprising group might try to get enough of their people in the military to make them less effective. We’ve talked about trying to root out the Sinhala gangs that run fentanyl in Mexico. If the grunt units are full of gang members, that’s going to be a problem.

Sinhala gangs that run fentanyl in Mexico

I didn’t realize the Sri Lankan mafia had such a global presence! Do their sworn enemies hail from the state of Tamil-ipas?

It was auto corrected. But dang, I might have to tell that story…

Serving in the military is pretty much the closest that a person can come to making themselves the tool of the country's government, so citizenship contingent on military service makes it so that people who are government supporters are more likely to become citizens than people who are not government supporters. To me such a system of incentives seems to be likely to push the country closer to authoritarian statism.

Indeed, it just occurred to me that that would be the logical thing to do for a military that has just acquired a state.

When a foreigner is required to serve in the military in order to secure citizenship, are they going to follow the constitution of the country that they're not a citizen of, or are they going to do what they're commanded to do?

Depends on what leverage the one who commands them has. I assume the American officers will be doing the commanding as well, and they're close while the alleged Chinese handlers are far away. Perhaps if they all have their families hostage in China it could work.

I think a poor kid from Central America will probably do the same as a poor kid from Texas who is joining to get free college.

There is one generation between the two groups.

Those two people are not fungible.

Why not? Regardless of national origin, army grunts tend to just do what they get told to do. That's what gets drilled into them relentlessly.

My father was once sent to pacify striking workers. While he was from out of town, most of his unit was not. It didn't result in anything that you'd read in the papers / history books about, but let's just say the powers that be did not make that particular mistake again.

There are limits to what grunts will do to their neighbors, and that's how you should want it, if you want to your government to maintain values beyond "do what I tell you".

There are also limits to what foreign grunts will do, but these are more observable in doing things for their neighbors rather than to them.

I am having trouble finding a citation, but my understanding is that while non-citizens can serve in the US military (and choose to become naturalized after, generally, a year of service), they are generally not eligible for a security clearance, and are limited to enlisted (non-officer) roles that aren't particularly sensitive. I don't know if that changes after naturalization.

After naturalization they may or may not be eligible for a clearance based on their specific circumstances, but they aren’t ineligible outright.

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