WFAA.com: Serving a nation not yet their own (A US Foreign Legion?) - by David lemore
They come from Mexico, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Colombia, Cambodia and a hundred other countries across the globe to find the promise of America. Increasingly they enlist to fight, and sometimes die, in America's wars.
About 69,300 foreign-born men and women serve in the U.S. armed forces, roughly 5 percent of the total active-duty force, according to the most recent data. Of those, 43 percent – 29,800 – are not U.S. citizens.
Conservative critics fear that increased reliance on an immigrant-based military may create security problems and turn the U.S. armed forces into a "green-card army" where citizenship becomes just another recruiting tool. "Service to the country is good. But my concern is that by taking in too many noncitizens into the military, we separate service and duty from citizenship," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors stricter immigration controls.
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