American Empire Retreats One Step

The American Empire retreated a step yesterday, if only temporarily, when the President's sweeping immigration bill failed to garner sufficient votes in the U.S. Senate. The bill, which would have provided amnesty and a path to U.S. citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, evidently offered something for everyone to hate, conservatives and liberals alike, as it became loaded with amendments and side proposals to address the complexity of what originally was perceived to be a simple set of immigration issues.

One such proposal, entitled (apparently with little sense of irony) DREAM, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, would have created America's first true mercenary element within our armed forces.

DREAM would have applied to an estimated 750,000 undocumented residents of military age, and stipulated that those who arrived in the United States before age 16, graduated from high school, and meet other qualifications could immediately enter the path to citizenship in exchange for at least two years' service in the armed forces.

The fine print, of course, being the requirement to survive two years of military service, as one can only imagine that units of immigrant-soldiers would be deployed to the hottest of global hot spots, currently Afghanistan and Iraq, but who knows where next.

And if a primary goal of illegal immigrant soldiers would be to live for those two years of military service, not necessarily to unconditionally defend America's programs to export democracy and freedom to hostile lands, how motivated would be these troops to blindly enter harm's way?

According to a June 16, 2007

Boston Globe story by Brian Bender:

the prospect of using military service as one pathway to citizenship appeals both to lawmakers who side with immigration rights advocates and those who want tougher immigration laws and tighter borders. (Full Story Here.)

Bill Carr , the Pentagon's acting deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, said the measure should become law because it would be "good for readiness" -- particularly at a time when the military, under pressure from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is struggling to attract high-quality recruits. At the same time, the Army and Marine Corps want to increase their ranks by nearly 100,000 over the next five years.

The prospect of recruiting foreigners to defend the United States has been a charged issue in the past. The Pentagon, for example, has opposed several proposals from leading defense specialists to recruit troops overseas -- a move critics liken to hiring mercenaries.

Using the military service option for select illegal immigrants, however, appears to have widespread support as one way to deal with the burgeoning illegal immigration problem.

Those who enlist under the provision would become eligible for a so-called Z visa, granting them probationary, or conditional, status as a legal resident -- the first step toward full citizenship.

Upon enlistment they would also become eligible for federal student loans and other benefits they are currently denied as undocumented immigrants.

The pool of qualified young people would be significant: The government estimates that there are at least 750,000 undocumented youths of military age in the United States. Only some of them would meet the standards of the DREAM Act, but even 10 percent would equal a typical full year's worth of new recruits.

The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, estimates that as many as 280,000 illegal immigrants between 18 and 24 would qualify for the program.

"A significant share . . . may join the military as it offers college tuition and job training benefits, as well as for patriotic reasons," according to a policy paper about the issue drafted by the institute.

Choosing military service could bring expedited citizenship for family members of undocumented residents, according to the institute.

"It's a substantial pool of people and I think it's crazy we are not tapping it," said Max Boot , a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Boot has previously suggested the United States go a step further by recruiting foreigners overseas to serve in the military. (All emphasis added.)

Currently about 35,000 non-citizens (permanent resident aliens - "green card" holders) serve in America's armed forces and more than a quarter of those are granted citizenship each year, but undocumented illegal immigrants are prohibited from military service.

DREAM would have changed this, taking the American Empire a step closer to imitating empires past, including everyone's favorite overworked comparison, the Roman Empire.

Yet what other analogy fits? Rome under its emperors, as meticulously documented by Edward Gibbon in his exhaustive "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," began to rely extensively on mercenary recruits, mostly from conquered lands, first to supplement then to "outsource" its military units.

According to Gibbon, prior to the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, the republic's military was reserved for Roman citizens who had a country to love, property to defend, and some role in enacting those laws which it was in their interest and duty to maintain. An honorable military leadership, albeit from a privileged class, commanding unyielding citizens, possessing “arms, (protective) of property, and collecting into constitutional assemblies, forms the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution,” Gibbon notes, and that “patriotism is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of a free government of which we are members.”

Such sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the Roman republic almost invincible, he writes, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary forces in the era of the emperors (27 BCE – 476 CE), during which “war was gradually improved into an art, and (then) degraded into a trade,” as the military became composed more of hired soldiers from throughout the empire in need of jobs than of Roman citizens defending a homeland.

Perhaps empires, like stars, are destined - ordained by history and physics - to follow certain stages, from birth to growth to some bright period of luminescence, only to progress in one of several variations all leading to a contracted, cold ending unrecognizable to its previous form.

As of yesterday, however, the American Empire, has retreated one step from the path of the Roman Empire and other empires past. Given the sustained interest among many to create a true mercenary element within our military, by recruiting illegal immigrants and rewarding them with American citizenship for those fortunate enough to survive the experience, DREAM will not disappear, despite the June 28, 2007 defeat of the comprehensive immigration reform bill.

What do I know?

Send me an email. --Keith Hazelton