The country’s all-volunteer military relies on a constant influx of recruits, but the U.S. military has struggled to meet its recruiting goals in recent years, raising concerns about military readiness in an increasingly turbulent world. Questions arise.
A new study from the University of Utah suggests that non-U.S.-born residents may be an important overlooked source of potential soldiers and sailors. An analysis of existing survey data shows that immigrants to the United States and Canada are more willing than native-born citizens to serve in those countries’ militaries.
christopher simon
“There is growing evidence that non-Indigenous-born people are clearly a group that we should be focusing more on when it comes to military recruitment,” said Professor of Public Affairs and lead author of the paper. said Christopher Simon. The study was published last month in the journal Military and Society. “Immigrants’ commitment to the United States is perhaps much stronger than people realize, and their appreciation for the values and opportunities that America offers is what drives them to fight for, protect, and protect them. Maybe you feel like it.”
These findings cut across the harsh narrative that views immigrants as parasites that some Republicans, including presidential and vice presidential candidates Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, have perpetuated this election cycle. It was something to do. In fact, many immigrants seek to contribute to their host countries, and some actively serve in the military. The research provided by Simon and his team shows that more can and should be done to motivate immigrants to protect the United States through military service.
Co-author Nicholas Lovrich, professor emeritus of political science at Washington State University and current U.S. collaborating fellow, says such anti-immigrant attitudes can actually undermine national security.
U.S. Army Special Forces Destiny Clark and Spc. Kenya Lopez, a paratrooper with the 11th Airborne Division, lower their parachutes. Credit: U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Patrick Sullivan. Banner photo: U.S. soldiers assigned to the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division participate in Griffin Shock 23 in Bemoło Piskie, Poland in 2023. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Agustín Montañez)
“While we once had a wide range of Americans willing to serve from every geographic and other region, those numbers are declining virtually everywhere. Immigrants coming into the country,” Lovrich said. “We have found that there is a very close connection between military preparedness, border security, and fixing our broken immigration system. Our nation’s family formation rate is declining. , the average number of children per family is decreasing, and we know that the fewer children there are, the less parents want their children to serve in the military. , all of these indicators are going in the wrong direction. Therefore, it doesn’t make much sense to close our borders to outsiders at this time.”
Co-authors include Col. Kenneth Bourboncourt, a retired U.S. Army officer based in Utah with extensive experience in military recruiting, and Michael Maltz, a professor of public administration at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.
nicolas lovlich
There are 1.3 million active duty military personnel employed in the United States, and 2 million including reservists. This corresponds to about 1% of the adult population, which is below the recruitment target, and the proportion is decreasing every year.
For the new study, researchers looked at immigration to both the United States and its neighbor to the north, Canada. Both countries are multi-ethnic democracies that have relied on all-volunteer militaries for decades, have aging populations and experience heavy immigration. Immigrants make up 14% of the US population and 23% of Canada’s population. In recent years, about 8,000 noncitizens have joined the U.S. military each year, out of a total of less than 150,000.
Soldiers deadlift more than 450 pounds in unison at the 2023 Army Best Squad Competition Park in Savannah, Georgia, Sept. 30, 2023. (U.S. Army photo by Daniel Marta)
Both countries offer immigration incentives, including military service and a fast-track pathway to citizenship. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalized 109,321 members from 2001 to 2015. According to the National Immigration Forum, there were 24,000 active immigrants in 2012.
This new study is an independent study that receives no funding from any source and has been maintained since 1981 by a worldwide network of social scientists who study changing values and their impact on social and political life. It leveraged an existing database known as the World Values Survey. The Utah team used WVS’s Wave 7, a 290-question dataset covering 87,000 respondents in 60 countries surveyed from 2017 to 2022. Their study focused on 4,018 respondents in Canada and 2,596 in the United States. The data included respondents’ immigration status and country of birth, but not the year of migration.
“We use social identity theory and depth psychology theory to examine and study how immigrants and native-born immigrants respond differently to questions about willingness to serve,” Simon said. spoke. “And it actually produced some pretty powerful research by expanding the theoretical framework beyond the existing military sociology literature.”
Immigrants to both countries were significantly more likely than native-born nationals to express a desire to wear a uniform and fight. US residents from the following countries were most motivated: China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Germany, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.
The willingness to engage in war seemed tied to the nature of the conflict and tended to be motivated by a desire for civil connection rather than militarism or nationalism.
“I’m not saying the public is willing to serve blindly,” Simon said. “For example, in some cases people may say they’re not willing to fight a war between states, but they’re willing to fight a war about terrorism.”
This study is based on a WVS survey that the researchers did not design or manage, so their new findings cannot be considered definitive without additional research.
“We were stuck wondering what questions they were going to ask,” Lovrich said. “But the panel tells us something important and points to an important next step in research. We have to talk to real people. We need to do a lot of focus groups and qualitative research to corroborate what we find in survey data to see if what we find applies to real people.”
So Simon and Lovrich hope to use their findings to help secure grants to support more detailed research on immigrants’ willingness to serve.
