Immigrants can now fast-track to citizenship through U.S. military (and what this REALLY means about America...)

According to a story at The New York Times, the United States military is about to offer American citizenship to legal immigrants if they enlist in the armed forces. Some might be eligible for citizenship in as little as six months.

The reason for this, is that the American military is admittedly "stretched thin" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So let's go review what happened a little over a millenia and a half ago, when the cost of maintaining its vast empire utterly taxed Rome's martial capability. With not nearly enough proper imperial denizens to draw upon, the Roman government eventually acquiesced to enlisting barbarians from Germania and Gaul to bolster its forces. In many cases, the foreign soldiers were offered Roman citizenship as part of a package of incentives (which could also include some lucrative latifundia).

Fifteen hundred years later, and another great world-spanning power... is now doing much the same.

Don't anybody give me any harsh looks now. I'm just the historian here.

Categories: cultural rot, history, military, roman epire, united states