What Next - Would You Join the Army for US Citizenship?
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 29 June 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
To shore up sagging enrollment, the U.S. military is doing what American industry does—looking to immigrants to fill out their numbers. Once a faster way to citizenship, serving in the armed forces has become another place where being an immigrant can carry harsh penalties—and can instead be a step on the way to deportation.
Guest: Sofya Aptekar, associate professor of urban studies, school of labor and urban studies, CUNY. Author of Green Card Soldier: Between Model Immigrant and Security Threat
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Madeline Ducharme, Anna Phillips, Paige Osburn, and Rob Gunther with help from Laura Spencer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | With WhatsApp's multiple layers of protection, don't just let the cat out of the bag. |
| 0:05.0 | Enter end encryption in Shores No One. |
| 0:07.0 | Not even WhatsApp can see your messages, so you can let out the whole litter. |
| 0:12.0 | And with View Once, your photos and videos disappear after they're seen. |
| 0:16.0 | So you can let the dogs out too. |
| 0:18.0 | And with the features working together, you can let the whole zoo run free. |
| 0:23.0 | Thanks to WhatsApp's fierce privacy. |
| 0:26.0 | WhatsApp message privately with multiple layers of protection. |
| 0:36.0 | For the last couple of years, the armed forces in the United States has had a problem. |
| 0:41.0 | They can't seem to find enough soldiers. |
| 0:44.0 | Good afternoon and welcome to the first personnel subcommittee hearing of the 118th Congress. |
| 0:53.0 | This is not a secret. |
| 0:55.0 | The Army's missed its recruitment goal by 25%. |
| 0:59.0 | Military leaders went to Congress a few months back to ask for more money to get troops in the door. |
| 1:05.0 | They talked about doing more intense outreach, telling their story better. |
| 1:10.0 | The benefits of military service, where it could provide. |
| 1:13.0 | And then, Senator Tammy Duckworth brought up something else. |
| 1:17.0 | Why not make it easier for immigrants to join? |
| 1:21.0 | This year, I'm introducing the Enlist Act. |
| 1:24.0 | This legislation enables the Department of Defense to expand its recruiting pool to include individuals like Duckworth recipients and other long-time residents of this country who can pass a DOD background check and meet the services high standards for enlistment. |
| 1:42.0 | This is the sort of suggestion that makes Sofia Opticar sit up and take notice. |
| 1:47.0 | Sofia is a sociologist at the City University of New York. |
... |
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