Army Spc. Charles Choi, 32, a native of South Korea, has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in statistics from Cornell University. He has an education and skills that make him a highly valued prospect for the military, but has not reached basic combat training after enrolling in the Army Reserve.
He has been waiting for two years.
Yes, I’m late, “Choi said in an interview with Military.com. “I’m still waiting for the security clearance to be completed.”
Choi is one of several non-citizens who joined the military through the “Military Accession Vital to the National Interest” program and has spoken to Military.com about how they have waited months or years for permits and checks to be processed. for security.
The program, designed to attract people with highly sought-after military service skills, has essentially stalled amid political battles over immigration policy. Of the estimated 10,400 servicemen who have registered to serve through MAVNI since 2008, more than 1,000 now face an uncertain future. Some can’t risk waiting.
This is especially true for Choi.
“The delays are so long and we have the final length of our visas and here comes the real problem,” he said.
His visa expires in less than a year.
“So if they just keep us in the dark and if we run out of visa, then we can’t work or drive,” he said. “It’s a very confusing situation.”
The complex history of MAVNI
In 2012, long before MAVNI fell victim to the country’s ever-changing immigration policy, then-Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno invited a sergeant. Saral Shresta to his Pentagon office for a photo and a greeting. See the article : Linux Patches Look To Restrict Modules From Poking Certain Registers, Using Select Instructions. Shresta, who was born in Nepal, has just won the competition for the best warrior in the army.
Shresta, who gained citizenship through MAVNI, was honored “Soldier of the Year” later that year at the U.S. Army’s annual convention.
(US Army photo by Teddy Wade)
Shresta’s motto is “Mission first, soldiers always”. He said “MAVNI was a blessing” in his progress from a student visa to the army and then taking the oath as a citizen.
In March 2018, an army sergeant. Santos Kachepati, a combat medic in the 62nd Medical Brigade with two tours in Afghanistan, was selected for the preparatory program for enrollment in medical degree or EMDP2. He will begin his studies to become a physician at George Mason University in Virginia in the fall.
“I consider this opportunity as an army doctor an honor and a privilege to serve the medical needs of our soldiers who risk their lives defending this nation,” Cachepatti said, according to a statement from the Louis-McHord United Base.
JBLM said Kachepati, also from Nepal, “came to the United States to attend college at the University of Texas at Arlington.” She completed the UT Nursing Program with honors in 2013. “
“He enlisted in the military in 2014 through the Military Accession Program, which is vital to the national interest, which allows certain qualified non-citizens to enlist in the U.S. military and thus gain the right to U.S. citizenship,” JBLM said.
MAVNI launched in 2008 as a one-year pilot program to recruit non-civilian recruits with language or medical skills for national wars to fight insurgents and give them a quick path to citizenship in return.
Administrator Eric Olson, then commander of the US Special Operations Command, said at the time that MAVNI recruits were “operationally critical” to the military. But the program was captured from the outset in the political immigration debate and security concerns of the High Command.
The program was suspended in 2009 due to fears of internal threats in the ranks when Army Major Nidal Malik Hassan, a U.S.-born psychiatrist, shot and killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others in a riot in Fort Hood, Texas, at 5 p.m. November of the same year.
The restrictions were lifted again in 2012, shortly after Shresta won the Soldier of the Year award. Since then, recruits at MAVNI have performed better in entrance tests and have had lower levels of wear than native troops, according to military data. But the program reached a turning point in September 2016.
(US Army photo by Kane Claxton)
The beginning of the end of MAVNI came in the form of a note from September 2016 to the Secretaries of Services from Peter Levine, then Acting Deputy Secretary for Personnel and Readiness.
Levine said that MAVNI’s pilot program “will currently expire on September 30, 2016.”
As it turned out, this was not the case.
In the same note, Levin said that “changes in the guidelines applied will strengthen and improve the implementation of the MAVNI program.”
He said that for MAVNI next year “the maximum number of joins will be: army – 1200; Navy – 65; Marine Corps – 65; and the Air Force – 70 ”.
Despite the language implying the continuation of the program, Pentagon spokesmen said the program was actually allowed to end until October 2017, when stricter screening procedures were in place for MAVNI recruits who had already registered.
Matisse seems to save MAVNI
In a July 2017 note to Secretary of Defense Jim Mathis, Pentagon officials and intelligence warned of the “spy potential” of foreign-born recruits. To see also : Edited Transcript of SDR.L earnings conference call or presentation 4-Mar-21 9:00am GMT.
“Although the Department recognizes the value of accelerated U.S. citizenship achieved through military service, it is in the national interest to ensure that all current and future members of the service will provide full security and fitness checks prior to naturalization,” the note said.
Recruits born abroad will have to “complete an investigation and obtain a favorable decision on military security suitability before entering the active, reserve or security service,” the note said. “Those in the MAVNI program and other recruits born abroad may have a higher risk of links with foreign intelligence services.”
(DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Sergeant Jet Carr)
However, Mathis, in a session with defense reporters in October 2017, said he was looking for ways to keep MAVNI alive despite Levine’s 2016 note, which again halted the program.
“Obviously we are taking steps to save the program if it can be saved,” Mathis said. “And I believe it can.”
In January 2018, on board his plane en route to Vietnam, Mathis revealed the possibility of MAVNI being renewed after the intensified inspection procedures were smoothed out.
Mathis said an internal examination found that the procedures were weak in screening MAVNI recruits.
“We were not up to our usual standards,” he said.
“We need to look at people’s backgrounds, and if you have a lot of family members in certain countries, then you will be under extra control,” he added. “Until we can verify them, we can’t bring more.
“You need to be able to screen them when they come in, instead of putting them in and then sending them to a department, and they say, ‘By the way, they don’t have a security clearance yet.’ And then they say, “Well, thanks a lot, but I can’t use them.”
“So it’s just a matter of aligning the process, the recruitment process, with the usual screening process,” Mathis continued. “There’s nothing more than that.”
Do not climb Kilimanjaro
The changes to the rules since 2016 have left more than 1,000 recruits already enlisted in the army in a state of bureaucratic stalemate, with the expiration of their visas pending security clearance. This may interest you : HAL awarded contract for 83 LCAs in₹48,000 cr. deal.
Choi, a Korean military specialist, described filling out a form that required him to list his travels abroad in the past seven years. He did not mention a trip to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, which took place more than seven years before he filled out the form.
Six months later, an army investigator called him. They had learned about the trip to Tanzania and needed some “clarification,” Choi said. “The way they do it is just not organized at all. It is clear that this was invented on the go. “
Choi said his battalion commander had called on him to consider attending a school for officer candidates.
Army Reserve Pfc. Alan Huanyu Liang, 24, was also screened while reporting to the BCT. He was born in China, has lived in the United States for six years and has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.
He signed his contract under the MAVNI program in May 2016.
“Since then, my life has changed dramatically with this program,” he told Military.com. “From the day I signed my contract, I was looking forward to the day of my ship [to BCT]. “
(Photo of the US Navy by Scott Thornblum)
Now, he said, almost two years have passed and no progress has been made since the contract was signed.
“I have been drilling every month since I was treated in my block, and I have witnessed people coming to the block later than I was sent and returned in uniform,” he said. “I really envy them. I wish one day I could be in that uniform and serve as a real soldier. I keep asking my recruiter and all I am told is to wait. “
Another MAVNI recruit, who did not want her name used, told Military.com that she had been in training for two years after graduating from BCT while waiting for additional screening to allow her to go. in AIT or in Advanced Individual Training.
In the meantime, she makes documents.
“You need a favorable solution [Military Service Suitability Determination] to go to AIT, ”she said. “I am between a rock and an anvil. It’s ridiculous, but I’m still motivated by the idea of serving. “
A lawyer who built MAVNI insists on saving him
“There is an epic bureaucratic struggle,” said Margaret Stoke, a lawyer and former lieutenant colonel in the military who played an important role in planning and initiating the MAVNI program while still in office.
“This is a horrific example of bureaucratic incompetence,” she said of efforts to kill the MAVNI program and subject those who have already registered to endless scrutiny.
“They say MAVNI is some kind of security threat,” Stoke told Military.com, but “there is no specific threat” to justify the strictures that would kill a program that has already proven its worth.
“They pose the same threat that US citizens would face,” said Stoke, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant Scholarship.
“We need these people to respond to a number of emerging threats,” she said. “What we don’t need is for people to sit on the base for 18 months without doing anything due to past checks.”
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