Military Tapping Foreign Nationals With Green Cards For Service

One complaint that is talked about in the hallways of the Veterans Administration by veterans in the language barrier between doctors and veterans. It becomes a very emotional issue for many veterans who served in the first Gulf War. It can at times make a visit to the VA like a day on the battlefield.

Now the military is tapping these same foreign nationals to meet shortages of doctors and other health care professionals. It may meet the needs of the military but it may not meet the needs of those on the battlefields in Iraq and other places. Is this the answer to filling the military’s needs? In my opinion, it isn’t.

Yahoo News has the story via AP. And I truly believe this story somehow went mainly unnoticed by the remainder of the media. It must be highlighted because it is time we start asking questions. From the story:

The Pentagon plans to recruit more foreigners in a fresh effort to make up for chronic shortages of doctors, nurses and linguists available for wartime duty.

The Defense Department already draws from aliens living in the United States on green cards and seeking permanent residency. But under a trial program, it will now look to also recruit from pools of foreigners who’ve been living in the states on student and work visas, with refugee or political asylum status and other temporary visas.

Who is responsible? Gates, the man who doesn’t cause waves or change policies. Hmmm… not quite true. More from the article:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has authorized the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to recruit certain legal residents whose critical medical and language skills are “vital to the national interest,” officials said, using for the first time a law passed three years ago.

Gates’ action enables the services to start a one-year pilot program to find up to 1,000 foreigners who have lived in the states legally for at least two years. The new recruits into the armed forces would get accelerated treatment in the process toward becoming U.S. citizens in return for military service in the United States or abroad.

“The services are doing a tremendous job of recruiting quality personnel to meet our various missions,” sometimes with bonus pay and tuition for medical school, said Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy. But they haven’t been able to fill their need for 24,000 doctors, dentists and nurses in the Defense Department.

The Pentagon’s doctor and nurse corps remain 1,000 short of the numbers needed to treat all the military’s patients, and Carr said he hoped the program would fill the gaps.

The military’s most pressing need is for neurosurgeons and dermatologists to treat troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with brain and burn injuries.

The force also lacks nurses with a broad range of specialties, Carr said.

I am certain the reason they can’t recruit the needed numbers because of the pay differential between the civilian wolrd and the military. This still doesn’t excuse the military expanding by fast tracking foreign nationals for citizenship. What kind of vetting does the military do to ensure these aren’t sleeper terrorists?

More:

At the same time, the U.S. Special Operations Command needs more people with special language and cultural skills for a war on terrorism that has taken the armed forces to more remote places across the globe.

Though the military has been looking for more Arabic speakers and others to help with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new program looks to recruit those proficient in some three dozen languages, including Albanian, Korean, Punjabi, Somali, Turkish, Burmese, Chinese, Czech, Malay and Swahili

There are now 29,000 non-citizens in uniform today, Carr said, with about 8,000 more enlisting every year.

He expects that among those who will be interested in the new effort are doctors with work visas who are employed at hospitals around the country, a program aimed at tackling shortages among U.S. medical professionals.

I am very uncomfortable with this “new policy”. I guess I am uncomfortable with this trend because these foreign nationals may not have the same loyalty to our country and fellow military members. How do we measure their loyalty toward our country? I don’t have the answer but remain uncomfortable with Gates policy changes.