Immigrating Outsourced Mexican Curry Militaria.

The title doesn't make much sense, does it? Well, it's just like the article I just read in this week's Time (The Fast Track, p. 18). The article began as a feel good story about a wounded soldier becoming a naturalized citizen with President Bush in attendance. Then it goes on about the history of allowing non-citizens serve in our military since the War of 1812 and how they are 2% of today's forces. Although I am aware of the 2002 Executive Order waving the mandatory three year waiting period before a petition for citizenship, I cannot help but to think that this could be used to infil sleeper agents into the military. Sounds too Conspiracy Theory-ish? Well, so what. It is worth to at least consider it a possibility. With all the news of illegal aliens using fake IDs to get into the country, who is to say that these IDs are not being used to join the military? I fail to believe that the background investigations being done for these noncitizens are 100% thorough. I am sure there is a small number of people in the military who joined with fake identification. A small number is too many. Even though the highly sensitive jobs are closed to most non-citizens, there are other jobs that do not require a clearance, but are just as sensitive. I can see someone going into the military and learning everything he can only to use it against us. It's been done before, it's just a matter of when it happens again. As porous as our borders are, I think it would be easy to slip in, obtain fake identification and join the military. I don't know about you, but at a glance, can you tell a Latin American from a Middle Eastern? No. Not at a glance. It's just creepy how my mind works. But it is a potential issue that needs to be investigated further.

Immigration is a huge problem right now. People in Congress are at ends as to what to do. Open the border? Are you smoking crack? Fences are expensive and probably useless. Hire more Border Patrol Agents? It's a long process and I am sure that they are not receiving nearly as many applications as they need agents. Probably because most of our more qualified people are fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Put more National Guardsmen on the border and militarize it? Now that's a solution. Viable? Could be, if we pulled some troops back from obscure places like Bosnia and Korea. We aren't accomplishing much in the former, and the citizens want us- but not our money- gone from the latter. We could increase the use of fingerprint technology. I know it's being used, but how stringently? Even with that, though, you are only catching maybe a handful that try. It's the people that cross illegally is the real issue. Some solutions? Deny citizenship to children of illegals regardless if they were born here. Heavily penalize or shut down businesses that hire illegals. Make public examples of them. There should be a way that the government can make a company register their workers in a national database that is accessible to all alphabet agencies. In a perfect world, that would be dandy. But I know what a headache that could be to start up as well as maintain. And there are no guarantees that there will be companies that pay people under the table. There is also an issue with information whoring. In every agency, federal government or military, there are always the info whores. I know all about this. Anyway, almost everyone can agree that our borders need to be tightened- and quickly. I am going way off my intention for tonight's babble.

Towards the end of the Time article I was reading, it said that there is talk about recruiting in India- a potential mega-source of English-speaking enlistees. I about had a seizure. First, corporations are outsourcing jobs to India and now the government is talking about opening recruiting stations there? WFT, guys? Can you see the potential problems there? The same ones I mentioned at the beginning of this tirade.

Maybe we should entertain the idea of conscription. Oh, wait. The politicians wouldn't want that. They couldn't stand the thought of having to send their spoiled little darlings in the military with the common riff raff.