Senator Dick Durban made a Senate 'talk' yesterday, and stated that the time had come to recruit 'new' residents of the US....meaning illegal migrants who'd crossed the border.
I pondered over this. The Pentagon is desperate enough...that if the House/Senate gave them funding for this idea....they'd accept it.
My issues?
At the last fifty-odd years of the Roman Empire.....this was precisely what the leadership of Rome was into....foreign soldiers. When you analyze the downfall of Rome, this is one of the ten key reasons for dissolving. We'd just repeat their failure.
Language issues for boot-camp? The massive bulk of migrants....speak a non-English language, so I don't see this as practical. Added to it....even if you brought them into a quick-to-learn situation....just to get to some level of communication, you'd need six months.
Then you come to the ID issue, and if the migrant was 'honest' or was some undercover-spy.
On the index of smart ideas....one to ten....I give this a '3'.
So what jobs are these people going to be doing? In the Navy in a shipboard environment, everything is posted in English in terms of equipment operation etc. A working knowledge of the language is critical to the ship's operation and safety.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 1980s...the Air Force had some recruitment of college graduates...whose primary/first language was Spanish. They all graduated from a US college and spoke English (some better than others). I could see a case where you sign up folks for infantry and put such officers in charge, but it'd have to be Spanish-only.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure the Navy and AF are shaking their heads...this wouldn't work unless you had a whole year of pure-English training.
But another element of this...why limit this to only the Pentagon? Why can't you have a Spanish-only speaker elected to the Senate or House?