Pentagon officials have decided to allow certain illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children to enlist in the military and be put on a pathway to citizenship, according to a Huffington Post report.
The new, unannounced policy, reports the left-leaning publication, would affect some of the 550,000 illegal immigrants who have qualified for the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Lawmakers pushing a measure called the ENLIST Act to allow the so-called DREAMers the ability to enlist in military warned last week that if Congress did not pass the legislation the Obama Administration would move to allow DREAMers to enlist anyway.
House leadership blocked the ENLIST Act from being attached to the National Defense Authorization Act as an amendment last week. Leadership did, however, leave open the possibility for a vote on the measure as a standalone bill.
The Huffington Post report, however, reveals that talk of administrative action to allow for undocumented enlistees was indeed substantive.
“The new change, under a Pentagon recruitment plan called Military Accessions Vital to National Interest, would allow some undocumented immigrants with critical language or medical skills to enlist in the armed forces – considerably limiting the number of Dreamers who would be eligible. Roughly 3,000 legal immigrants have enlisted through the MAVNI program since 2009, and now the program will be open to those who are in the country illegally,” The Huffington Post report reads.