Note: This posting is a follow-up to our June 2 post “We Don’t Need Foreigners to Fill the Ranks.”
In a June 2 article, Breitbart’s Neil Munro reveals a new angle to the open-borders crowd’s ongoing demand for handing over more authority, more responsibility, and more power to the foreign born. What we need, the lobbyists are saying, is more immigrants in the military.
Munro quotes one Margaret D. Stock, lieutenant colonel (retired, U.S. Army Reserve), now an immigration lawyer and independent candidate for the U.S. Senate from Alaska. In a May 25 op-ed in the Washington Post, Stock noted the military’s difficulty in enlisting new American recruits:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even if they wanted to join, 71 percent of young [Americans] cannot meet military requirements. One in four is overweight. Others either fail to meet the education requirements necessary to serve in a high-tech 21st-century military or have mental health challenges or a drug abuse or criminal record.
The answer? Foreign-born troops:
The U.S. population is now 13.5 percent foreign born, but foreign-born individuals make up less than 4 percent of the military. Thousands of qualified, U.S.-educated potential recruits cannot sign up. . . The demographic challenges and declining number of eligible recruits is a national security threat from within our own borders. . . Our leaders must act now with the urgency that this demographic threat demands.
Respect for the study of history is not widely shared among Americans today. If it were, the example of the Roman Empire’s decline and fall might be given more attention. In an article titled “8 Reasons Why Rome Fell,” History.com lists the following as reason number 8:
8. Weakening of the Roman legions
For most of its history, Rome’s military was the envy of the ancient world. But during the decline, the makeup of the once mighty legions began to change. Unable to recruit enough soldiers from the Roman citizenry, emperors like Diocletian and Constantine began hiring foreign mercenaries to prop up their armies. . . While these Germanic soldiers of fortune proved to be fierce warriors, they also had little or no loyalty to the empire, and their power-hungry officers often turned against their Roman employers. In fact, many of the barbarians who sacked the city of Rome and brought down the Western Empire had earned their military stripes while serving in the Roman legions. [Emphasis added.]
A foreign-born army is a national security calamity waiting to happen. Contrary to Lt. Col. Stock and others, the answer is to clean up America–not transform it into the Other.
For more, see Breitbart.