re: #372 Shiplord Kirel

My tea party neighbor was outraged to hear that actual foreigners, non-citizens, are being allowed to join the US armed forces. Actually, as I explained to him, there has never been a time when US citizenship was a requirement for enlistment, as long as one is willing to take the oath to the US Constitution. The US is one of the few countries that allow this. Immigrant soldiers have a long history in this country, and it is a proud tradition of the US armed forces. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants, many of them just off the boat, served in the Civil War. More than half of the cavalrymen who died with Custer were foreign born. There was a mass citizenship ceremony for US troops in Afghanistan a while back, and the same ceremony has been conducted in Baghdad, Saigon, and hundreds of other places.

IIRC, it is a wonderful way for people to gain citizenship.