Non-Citizens in the Enlisted

U.S. Military

Molly F. McIntosh • Seema Sayala

with David Gregory

CRM D0025768.A2/Final
November 2011
Photo credit line: Cpl Juan Gaytan takes the oath of allegiance during a naturalization ceremony in San Diego
on June 24, 2009. Ten service members, including Gaytan, and 800 others became U.S. citizens during the
ceremony. Some requirements for obtaining citizenship are having an understanding of U.S. history and
government and good moral character. Collectively, the applicants represented over 80 countries. Gaytan
works in the intelligence section of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Approved for distribution: November 2011

Anita Hattiangadi
Research Team Leader
Marine Corps Manpower Team

This document represents the best opinion of CNA at the time of issue.
It does not necessarily represent the opinion of the Department of the Navy.

Cleared for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited. Specific authority: N00014-11-D-0323.

Copies of this document can be obtained through the Defense Technical Information Center at www.dtic.mil
or contact CNA Document Control and Distribution Section at 703-824-2123.

Copyright  2011 CNA

This work was created in the performance of Federal Government Contract Number N00014-11-D-0323. Any copyright in
this work is subject to the Government's Unlimited Rights license as defined in DFARS 252.227-7013 and/or DFARS
252.227-7014. The reproduction of this work for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited. Nongovernmental users may
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Contents
Executive summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The non-citizen population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Estimating the size of the recruitable non-citizen
population. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Region of origin and foreign language ability . . . . . . . 13
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Recruiting non-citizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Non-citizen enlistment requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Occupation restrictions and reenlistment standards . . . . 21

First-term performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Citizenship status and attrition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Citizenship attainment and time-to-citizenship. . . . . . . . . . 33

Service-specific naturalization policies . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Army . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Navy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Air Force. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Marine Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Citizenship attainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Time-to-citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Conclusions and recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Policy implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Areas for future research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

i
 Appendix A: Military Accessions Vital to the National
Interest (MAVNI) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Appendix B: Foreign languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Appendix C: Verifying non-citizens' education

credentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Appendix D: Occupations that do not require

citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Appendix E: Attrition analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Appendix F: Citizenship analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

List of figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

List of tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

ii
Executive summary
Although in recent years non-citizens have made up only a small
share of enlisted accessions (roughly 4 percent), they are a potentially
valuable pool for enlisted recruiting for three reasons. First, the
number of U.S. non-citizens who are eligible for enlisted military ser-
vice is large. Approximately 1.2 million non-citizens are in the desired
age range (18 to 29) and have the requisite education, resident status,
and English language ability for enlistment. Second, our data suggest
that a sizable share of the recruitable U.S. non-citizen population
comes from diverse backgrounds and possesses language and cultural
skills that are of strategic interest to the U.S. military. Third, we find
that non-citizen recruits are far less likely than citizen recruits to
attrite in the first term, even after controlling for demographic and
service-related characteristics that likely affect attrition.

Recent policy changes have streamlined naturalization for many non-

citizen servicemembers, so it is not surprising that citizenship attain-
ment has increased and time-to-citizenship has decreased over time
among non-citizen servicemembers. Our empirical analysis of citizen-
ship attainment suggests that non-citizens in the Air Force are more
likely than non-citizens in the other services to become citizens. In
addition, non-citizens who are minorities, female, better educated,
married or have dependents, or who score higher on the Armed
Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) are more likely to become citizens.

Regarding time-to-citizenship, we find that it is longer for minority

non-citizens but shorter for non-citizens who are better educated or
have higher AFQT scores. 1 Also, since the July 2002 signing of

1. In this paper, we use the term minority to refer to a person who is of

minority racial or ethnic descent. For instance, someone who is non-
white or Hispanic is considered a minority. This is distinct from some-
one’s citizenship status—citizens and non-citizens alike can be either
minorities or non-minorities.

1
 Executive Order (EO) 13269 (Expedited Naturalization of Aliens and
Noncitizen Nationals Serving in an Active-Duty Status During the War
on Terrorism), the waiting period for non-citizen servicemembers to
apply for citizenship has been reduced from 3 years to 1 day of hon-
orable service. In the post-EO period, we find that non-citizens in the
Marine Corps have had the longest average time-to-citizenship,
followed by the Navy and the Air Force, and finally the Army. In the
coming years, unless the Marine Corps starts a basic training natural-
ization program, we expect that Marine time-to-citizenship will likely
remain high and will likely fall for the other services. Once the nation
is no longer at war, however, the EO will expire; unless current law is
changed, this will have two implications: (1) the waiting period for
non-citizen servicemembers applying for citizenship—and therefore
time-to-citizenship—will increase and (2) the impetus behind natu-
ralizing at basic training will disappear.

Our analysis produces four important policy implications. We

describe these implications in the paragraphs that follow.

First, the services should develop strategies to recruit non-citizens

more effectively. Our estimates show an ample pool of qualified non-
citizen recruits who may attrite at far lower rates than their citizen
counterparts during the first term. Moreover, non-citizens represent
a more diverse group of recruits, not only in terms of racial, ethnic,
and gender diversity but also in terms of diversity of skill. Indeed, our
data show that non-citizen recruits are likely to possess language and
cultural skills that are of strategic interest to the U.S. military. As the
U.S. economy improves and the military enters a more difficult
recruiting environment, it is important to keep in mind this popula-
tion’s potential as a recruiting resource. This is especially important
given the recent declines in fertility rates associated with the current
economic crisis. In the coming decades, the only source of net growth
in the U.S. recruiting-age population is projected to be immigration
(that is, immigrants and their U.S.-born children).

Second, the Department of Defense (DOD) and United States Citi-

zenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) would both benefit from
the sharing of administrative data. For instance, DOD would have
more visibility on citizenship attainment and time-to-citizenship if

2
USCIS notified DOD directly when servicemembers' citizenship
applications were approved. Also, USCIS would have more visibility
on whether servicemembers are completing their service obligations
in exchange for expedited citizenship processing if DOD notified
USCIS directly when servicemembers attrite from the military.2

Third, the Army’s, Navy’s, and Air Force’s basic training naturaliza-
tion program prototypes have demonstrated that there is a quick and
efficient way to naturalize large groups of non-citizen recruits. We
suggest that the programs already in place should be supported and
that the Marine Corps should be encouraged to continue investigat-
ing the possibility of starting its own program.

Fourth, the Army’s and Navy’s experiences with naturalizing at basic

training suggest that it is crucial to have recruiters involved in dissem-
inating citizenship information and paperwork to non-citizen
recruits to optimize the efficiency and efficacy of basic training natu-
ralizations. Of course, these basic training-naturalization-related rec-
ommendations will be irrelevant when the United States is no longer
at war; at that point—unless current law is changed—a 1-year waiting
period will be reinstated for servicemembers who wish to apply for cit-
izenship.

Looking ahead, we note five areas for future research:

• It would be useful to know what is driving the differences that

we observe across the services in the effect of citizenship status
at accession on attrition. One possible explanation could be dif-
ferences in country of origin, but an empirical test of this
hypothesis would require additional data.

• We could investigate the possibility that some characteristics of

non-citizen recruits, beyond their citizenship status at acces-
sion, might be associated with lower first-term attrition. If so,

2. USCIS has the authority to revoke citizenship if a servicemember leaves

the military with other-than-honorable discharge before completing
five years of service. To our knowledge, however, USCIS does not have
sufficient visibility on attrition from the services to be able to enforce
this, nor does this currently seem to be a priority for USCIS.

3
 recruiters could use this information to target specific non-citi-
zens who are particularly likely to remain in the service through
the end of the first term. Also, similar to this idea, we could
explore whether certain observable characteristics are more or
less predictive of attrition for non-citizen recruits than they are
for citizen recruits.

• We could examine how likely non-citizen recruits are to remain

in the military beyond the first term after becoming citizens.
On one hand, non-citizen recruits might seek citizenship to
enhance the opportunities available to them in the military;
therefore citizenship attainment could signal a non-citizen
recruit’s desire to remain in the military. On the other hand,
non-citizens might join the military for the purpose of attaining
citizenship, or they might decide, on attaining citizenship, that
they wish to pursue opportunities outside the military and
would thus be less likely to stay in the military.

• We could explore other measures of first-term performance for

non-citizen recruits besides first-term attrition. For instance, we
could examine whether non-citizen recruits advance more
quickly in addition to attriting less during the first term.

• We could consider other measures of time-to-citizenship

beyond the average used in this analysis. In particular, we could
explore measures that capture the spread (or variance) in time-
to-citizenship that is otherwise masked when looking at an aver-
age. Given the services’ different policies and practices relating
to the naturalization of servicemembers, it would be particu-
larly interesting to do a cross-service comparison using alterna-
tive measures of time-to-citizenship.

4
Background
From FY99 through FY08, roughly 70,000 non-prior-service (NPS)
non-citizens accessed into the active-duty enlisted military, represent-
ing about 4 percent of all NPS accessions.3 Although they currently
represent only a small share of enlisted NPS accessions, non-citizens
are a valuable enlisted recruiting resource, especially as the U.S. econ-
omy improves and the military enters a more difficult recruiting envi-
ronment. Non-citizens also may be a source of greater diversity
among recruits, both in terms of diversity in the traditional sense
(race, ethnicity, and gender) and in terms of diversity of skills that are
of strategic interest to the U.S. military. Indeed, the Quadrennial
Defense Review emphasizes DOD’s increasing desire to recruit
people with specific critical skills:

[I]n coming years, we will face additional challenges to our

ability to attract qualified young men and women into the
Armed Forces....We will also be challenged to recruit per-
sonnel with specialized skills in such areas [sic] foreign lan-
guages, medicine, and computer network operations....
Given the inherent link between language and cultural
expertise and mission success, this area requires continued
focus. [1, pp. 51, 54]

In a previous CNA report [2], non-citizen recruits were found to

exhibit better first-term performance (in terms of lower attrition
rates) than citizen recruits, even after controlling for relevant demo-

3. In this paper, we consider only enlisted non-citizen accessions because

citizenship is a requirement for accession into the officer corps, with
one exception. In the U.S. Army Reserve, non-citizens holding green
cards can be commissioned as officers if they are medical professionals,
lawyers, or chaplains. Still, it is possible that some non-citizen enlisted
recruits who hold college degrees enlist with the intent of attaining cit-
izenship and transitioning into the officer corps, so at various points
throughout the paper we comment on how our results might be rele-
vant for the officer corps as well.

5
 graphic and service-related characteristics.4 The report also analyzed
data on citizenship attainment to determine what drives non-citizen
recruits to become citizens while serving. Because several years have
passed since [2] was written, Office of Accession Policy, OUSD, has
asked CNA to take a fresh look at first-term attrition and citizenship
attainment for a recent cohort of non-citizen recruits.

Our reexamination of citizenship attainment among non-citizen

recruits is further warranted by the recent policy changes that have
streamlined naturalization for non-citizen servicemembers. Follow-
ing the events of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush
signed an Executive Order (EO) in July 2002 allowing all non-citizens
who have served honorably for 1 day to apply for U.S. citizenship (this
is relative to a 5-year waiting period for civilian non-citizens). Previ-
ously, non-citizen servicemembers were required to serve for 3 years
before becoming eligible to apply for citizenship. In addition, the
2004 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) reduced the
peacetime waiting period for U.S. citizenship application from 3 years
to 1 year.5 After this, the 2006 NDAA repealed service-specific citizen-
ship enlistment statutes and established a single statute across all the
services.6

Also, given its heightened interest in increasing language and cul-

tural skill capabilities, the U.S. military has started specifically recruit-
ing non-citizens to leverage this previously largely untapped resource.

4. For other recent work on this topic, see [3] and [4].
5. The 2004 NDAA also provided other benefits to non-citizen service-
members, including emergency leave and priority government trans-
portation, if needed, to complete citizenship processing as well as the
elimination of all citizenship application fees.
6. According to the statute, the following are eligible to enlist: United
States nationals, Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs), and those consid-
ered to be vital to the national interest (including those without LPR sta-
tus). In addition, people are eligible to enlist if they are citizens of a
nation covered by one of the following compacts: The Compact of Free
Association Between the Federated States of Micronesia and the United
States, The Compact of Free Association Between the Republic of the
Marshall Islands and the United States, or The Compact of Free Associ-
ation Between Palau and the United States.

6
Indeed, such programs as DOD’s Military Accessions Vital to the
National Interest (MAVNI) and the Army’s 09L are aimed at recruit-
ing non-citizens who hold language and cultural skills that are of stra-
tegic interest to the U.S. military.7 These programs have given the
services an incentive to partner with USCIS and develop basic train-
ing naturalization programs. Such programs are currently in opera-
tion at Army, Navy, and Air Force basic training, where the vast
majority of non-citizen recruits who wish to apply for citizenship are
naturalized by the end of basic training.

In the remaining sections of this report, we first describe the U.S.

non-citizen population, focusing on those who are eligible for enlist-
ment. Then, we review policies that govern the recruitment of non-
citizens into the enlisted force. Next, we discuss our empirical analysis
of the relationship between attrition and citizenship at accession as
well as the determinants of citizenship attainment and time-to-citizen-
ship. We close with some policy recommendations and conclusions.

7. The 09L pilot program (where 09L is the Army’s special interpreter/
translator military occupational specialty (MOS)) began in 2003 as a
way for the Army to directly access soldiers who are heritage or native
speakers of languages that are critical to the war effort. Although the
majority of 09L recruits are non-citizens, the program recruits citizens,
too.

7
 This page intentionally left blank.

8
The non-citizen population8
Here, we examine the number and the characteristics of non-citizens
who are likely to be eligible for the U.S. military. First, we discuss the
data used to produce the estimates discussed in this section. Next, we
estimate the size of the recruitable non-citizen population, which is a
subset of the overall non-citizen population—narrowed by age, resi-
dency status, education, and English language ability in accordance
with military recruiting standards. Finally, we examine region of
origin and foreign language ability among non-citizens since these
characteristics might be of strategic interest to the military.9

Data
To characterize the non-citizen population, we use data from two
sources: (1) the American Community Survey (ACS),10 an annual

8. Dr. Martha Farnsworth Riche, former director of the United States

Census Bureau, and Dr. Jeffrey Passel, Senior Demographer at the Pew
Hispanic Center, made substantial contributions to this section. We are
grateful for their assistance and assume full responsibility for any errors.
9. For example, the military has a program, Military Accessions Vital to the
National Interest (MAVNI), aimed at recruiting non-LPR non-citizens
with critical language, cultural skills, and health care professional skills.
For more on MAVNI, see appendix A.
10. See http://www.census.gov/acs/www/. Data on citizenship status used
to come from a supplementary census form—the long form—replaced in
2010 by the ACS, which allows for combining 5 years of ACS data into a
"rolling census" that produces the same quality of data as the long form
but more frequently. On February 8, 2011 (too late for this paper), the
Census Bureau released the first 5-year rolling census; it will update the
5-year census each year as new data become available. The ACS also may
be aggregated into 3-year pooled samples to provide a larger sample
than any single year of the ACS. Since these 3-year samples are made
available in advance of the 5-year rolling census, we use the 2006–2008
pooled sample for our analysis.

9
 survey of roughly 20 percent of U.S. households, and (2) the Current
Population Survey (CPS),11 a monthly survey of about 60,000 U.S.
households. The Census Bureau conducts both the ACS and the CPS.
Each data source has advantages and disadvantages for use in this
context, as we describe next.

There are two main advantages to using the ACS. First, relative to the
CPS, the ACS has a much larger sample size. Second, the ACS
includes information on characteristics that are required of a military
recruit, such as educational attainment and English language ability,
as well as characteristics that might be desirable in a military recruit,
such as foreign language ability and country of origin. Even with the
larger ACS sample, the number of respondents in the relevant popu-
lation for recruiting—people age 18 to 29—is relatively small, espe-
cially when we segment the sample by educational attainment,
English language proficiency, country of origin, and foreign lan-
guage ability. Therefore, we used the three-year 2006–2008 pooled
ACS (the most recent three-year pooled sample available) to generate
a sufficiently large sample.12

However, the primary disadvantage of the ACS relative to the CPS is

the fact that the ACS does not collect information on non-citizens'
resident status. Non-citizens with legal permanent resident (LPR)
status are eligible to enlist, but non-citizens who are only temporary
residents (e.g., those holding visas for studying, business, or plea-
sure), refugees, or undocumented immigrants are not eligible to
enlist.13 Therefore, the major limitation of the ACS estimates is that
they include people who are not eligible to enlist based on residency
status. One way to think about the estimates based on the ACS is that
they reflect the potential non-citizen recruiting pool. In other words,

11. For more information, see http://www.bls.gov/cps/.

12. In addition, in the midst of our analysis, the 2009 ACS data became
available (though the updated three-year pooled sample still is not avail-
able). The estimates we present here are robust, whether we use the
2006–2008 pooled sample or the 2009 single-year sample.
13. Exceptions are certain visa-holders, asylum seekers, and refugees who
possess specific health care professional, language, or cultural skills and
are recruited into MAVNI. Again, for more on MAVNI, see appendix A.

10
 the sample includes the actual recruiting pool plus those who could
be recruited if their citizenship or legal residence status changed.

Using the CPS, we can differentiate between LPRs and other non-
citizens, allowing us to focus on non-citizens who are eligible to enlist.
The main drawbacks to using the CPS relative to the ACS, however,
are that it is a much smaller sample, it does not contain as much detail
on country of origin, and it has no information on English profi-
ciency or foreign language ability.

Although both datasets have downsides, each contributes something

unique to the discussion. Therefore, in the remainder of this section,
we use information from both the ACS and the CPS in our depiction
of the recruitable non-citizen population in the United States.

Estimating the size of the recruitable non-citizen population

In general, the military tends to access enlisted recruits who meet spe-
cific age and education standards. Most enlisted recruits are between
the ages of 18 and 24 at the time they enlist (though, at the extremes,
recruits can be as young as 17 and as old as 42). For non-citizens, how-
ever, we expand the recruitable age window to include 25- to 29-year-
olds since, as we describe later, a considerable share of non-citizen
recruits are in this older age group.

In terms of education, the military primarily recruits people who have

at least a high school degree. Other enlistment standards that are par-
ticularly binding for non-citizen recruits include LPR status and
English proficiency. 14 Therefore, in estimating the size of the
recruitable non-citizen population, we narrow our focus to those who
are age 18 to 29, are LPRs, have at least a high school degree, and can
speak English well.15 Figure 1 shows our estimate of the size of the
recruitable non-citizen population. Among non-citizens currently in
the United States, about 7 million are age 18 to 29.

14. Again, MAVNI recruits are the most notable exception.

15. The ACS asks respondents if they speak English "very well," "well," "not
well," or "not at all." To estimate the number of people who speak
English well, we combine the first two responses.

11
Figure 1. Recruitable non-citizen populationa

8
7.0
7

5
(in millions)
Number

4
3 2.3
2 1.6
1.2
1 0.6

0
Age 18-29 Age 18-29 and Age 18-29, Age 18-29, Age 18-29,
LPR LPR, and high LPR, high LPR, high
school school school
educated educated, and educated,
speaks English speaks English
well well, and male

a. Source: Estimates prepared by Dr. Martha Farnsworth using the ACS and by Dr. Jeffrey Passel using the CPS.

The recruitable population, however, is smaller than 7 million since

we must consider residency status, education, and English proficiency
as well as age. When we limit our focus to non-citizens age 18 to 29
who are LPRs, the size of the population falls 67 percent, from 7.0
million to 2.3 million people. When we add the restriction of a high
school degree or more, the size of the population falls to just over 1.6
million (a drop of another 10 percent). This is compared with the
overall U.S. population of high-school-educated 18- to 29-year-olds
numbering around 42 million. When we add the restriction of being
able to speak English well, the size of the population falls to 1.2 mil-
lion people (a drop of another 5 percent).16 In addition, since men

16. Since there is no information on English proficiency in the CPS, our

estimate of the number of people who speak English well is based on a
sample of age-restricted, but not residency-status-restricted, non-
citizens. Therefore, in applying the English proficiency restriction to
the population of 18- to 29-year-old LPRs, we implicitly assume that the
percentage who speak English well is the same among LPRs as it is
among other non-citizens.

12
 are more likely than women to join the military, we also consider how
the size of the population changes when we exclude women; figure 1
(last bar) shows that the population falls to just above half a million.17

Although the pool of recruitable non-citizens might appear small rel-

ative to the overall recruitable population, non-citizens may still rep-
resent a key recruiting resource. Due to the current economic crisis,
fertility rates have fallen and this will likely affect the size of the future
U.S. population in the military’s target recruiting age group (ages 18
to 24).18 Indeed, immigration (i.e., immigrants and their U.S.-born
children) is projected to be the only source of net growth in the U.S.
population in this age group [7].

Region of origin and foreign language ability

As mentioned earlier, non-citizens may have skills that are of strategic
interest to the U.S. military, such as language and cultural skills.
Figure 2 shows the distribution of non-citizens, 18 to 29, with at least
a high school degree who speak English well, by region of origin.19
Fully half of them come from the Americas. The next largest region
of origin is Asia (17 percent), followed by Europe, India and Pakistan,
Africa, and the Middle East (12, 9, 7, and 3 percent, respectively).

17. Estimates of the size of the recruitable population can be broken down
further by state or region of U.S. residence, which might be useful for
recruiters. However, the sample size becomes problematically small
when disaggregating the data to this extent.
18. Recent Census Bureau estimates predict that the size of the U.S. popu-
lation age 18 to 24 will increase in the coming decades, but they do not
factor in the effect of the current economic crisis because they were pre-
pared before the crisis occurred [5]. A recent fertility report from the
National Center for Health Statistics shows a pronounced decline in fer-
tility since 2007 [6]. Since it is forecasted that this will affect the size of
the U.S. population age 18 to 24 in roughly two decades, the Census
Bureau’s forthcoming population projections will likely predict future
declines in the size of the population in this age group.
19. Unfortunately, the CPS estimates do not allow us to restrict the sample
by region or foreign language ability. Thus, in this section, we use data
from the ACS only, which means that our estimates pertain to all resi-
dency statuses, not just LPRs.

13
Figure 2. Region of origin among non-citizens age 18 to 29 who have at least a high school
degree and speak English wella

Africa, Other, 1%
Europe, 12%
7%

Middle East, 3%

India and
Pakistan, 9%

Asia, 17%

Americas,
51%

a. Source: Estimates prepared by Dr. Martha Farnsworth Riche using the ACS. Total sample size is 2.6 million.

The share of non-citizens age 18 to 29 who speak English well and

have more than a high school degree varies dramatically by region of
origin. Among 18- to 24-year-old non-citizens who speak English well
and have more than a high school education, only one-third are from
the Americas compared with 81 percent who are from India or Paki-
stan. The difference is even more pronounced for 25- to 29-year-olds;
more than 90 percent of these non-citizens who speak English well
and are from India, Pakistan, or China have more than a high school
degree. In other words, should the services want to strategically
recruit non-citizens with higher education, they should target non-
citizens from India, Pakistan, or China.

In addition to region of origin, foreign language ability among non-

citizen recruits might be of strategic interest to the military.20 Our

20. Each year, DOD issues a strategic language list (SLL) for recruiting,
retention, and training. See appendix B for the FY11 SLL.

14
 estimates of foreign language ability are based on ACS data on lan-
guage spoken at home. Unfortunately, sample sizes do not permit us
to both approximate the recruitable population and examine lan-
guage ability for individual languages. Instead, we aggregate lan-
guages into the groups shown in figure 3: Spanish, French, other
European, Arabic and other Middle Eastern, languages of India, Chi-
nese, other Asian and Pacific Island, African.21

Figure 3. Language spoken at home among non-citizens age 18 to 29 who have at least a high
school degree and speak English wella

Other Asian African, 3%

English, 15%
and Pacific
Island, 10%

Chinese,
5%

Languages of
India, 10%

Arabic and other

Middle Eastern,
4%

Spanish, 38%
Other
European,
11% French,
4%

a. Source: Estimates prepared by Dr. Martha Farnsworth Riche using the ACS. Total sample size is 2.6 million.

Figure 3 shows the distribution of languages spoken at home among

non-citizens age 18 to 29 who have at least a high school degree and
speak English well. For 15 percent of this group, the language spoken
at home is English, while the remaining 85 percent speak a foreign
language at home.

21. Table 3 in appendix B shows the full listing of languages by group. The
table includes Native American languages, but there are very few non-
citizens who speak these languages (less than 1 percent in our data).
Therefore, this group is excluded from figure 3.

15
 The largest group of foreign language speakers is Spanish speakers
(making up just over a third of these non-citizens), followed by those
who speak other European languages (11 percent). Although 5 per-
cent of this group of non-citizens speak Chinese at home, another 10
percent speak other Asian and Pacific Island languages. The remain-
ing non-citizens in this group speak the languages of India (10 per-
cent), French (4 percent), Arabic and other Middle Eastern
languages (4 percent), and African languages (3 percent). The distri-
bution of languages spoken at home, however, changes remarkably
when we narrow our focus to non-citizens age 18 to 29 who speak
English well and have more than a high school degree (figure 4).

Figure 4. Language spoken at home among non-citizens age 18 to 29 who have more than a
high school degree and speak English wella

African, 3%
Other Asian and English, 17%
Pacific Island,
12%

Chinese, 7%

Languages of
India, 15% Spanish, 26%

Arabic and other

Middle Eastern,
4%
Other French, 4%
European, 12%

a. Source: Estimates prepared by Dr. Martha Farnsworth Riche using the ACS. Total sample size is 1.6 million.

As the figure shows, the largest change is in the share that speaks
Spanish at home. As we saw in figure 3, among those with at least a

16
 high school degree, 38 percent speak Spanish at home. In contrast,
among those with more than a high school degree, only 26 percent
speak Spanish at home. In addition, the share who speaks the lan-
guages of India increases from 10 percent to 15 percent. These results
have implications for recruiting for specific language ability (other
than Spanish) for the officer corps since some of these non-citizens
will hold college degrees.22

Summary
Our analysis of the non-citizen population in the United States sug-
gests that there is a large group of non-citizens who meet enlisted mil-
itary recruiting standards. We estimate that approximately 1.2 million
LPRs age 18 to 29 have at least a high school education and speak
English well; roughly half of these people are men. In addition, we
find that the majority of recruitable non-citizens come from the
Americas, but nontrivial shares also come from Asia, Europe, and
India and Pakistan. Moreover, education profiles among non-citizens
vary dramatically by region of origin. For example, while only a third
of non-citizens from the Americas who are age 18 to 29 and speak
English well have more than a high school degree, nearly all non-
citizens from India, Pakistan, or China who are age 25 to 29 and speak
English well have more than a high school degree. Finally, while
Spanish is the most common foreign language spoken in the homes
of recruitable non-citizens, other European languages, languages of
India, and Asian languages are also frequently spoken at home. This
is particularly true among recruitable non-citizens with more than a
high school education, who, given their education levels, might be
candidates for the officer corps.

These results have three potential implications for military recruiting.

First, there is an ample supply of non-citizens in the United States
who are eligible for military service. Indeed, non-citizens are a partic-
ularly attractive recruiting resource since immigration is projected to

22. As mentioned earlier, it is possible that some non-citizen enlisted

recruits who hold college degrees may enlist with the intent of attaining
citizenship and later transitioning into the officer corps.

17
 be the only source of net growth in the U.S. population among 18- to
24-year-olds in the coming decades. Second, should the services want
to strategically recruit non-citizens with higher education, their best
prospect lies in recruiting non-citizens from India, Pakistan, or
China. Third, among non-citizens who are eligible to enlist, a good
share is likely to possess language and cultural skills that are of strate-
gic interest to the U.S. military.

18
Recruiting non-citizens
In this section, we summarize the policies that govern the recruit-
ment of non-citizens into the enlisted force. To better understand
how non-citizens are recruited into the military, we spoke to both
recruiters and non-citizen recruits. Because each service has its own
policies and practices for recruiting non-citizens, we spoke with sev-
eral recruiters from each of the four services.23 Our interactions with
non-citizen recruits, however, were limited to those present during
our visits to the Army and Navy basic training naturalization pro-
grams.24 Since recruiters and non-citizen recruits were not randomly
selected to be included in our interviews, the information gathered
may not be representative of all recruiters or non-citizen recruits.
Nonetheless, the interviews provide interesting insights into how non-
citizens are recruited.

In general, non-citizen recruits are not a specific part of any service's

recruiting strategy.25 Rather, recruiters who tend to recruit a sizable
number of non-citizens indicated that this is simply because they are
assigned to an area with a large non-citizen population. Recruiters
also said that the services do not provide any special instructions with
respect to recruiting non-citizens—instead, recruiters receive guid-
ance on recruiting in general.

23. We conducted phone interviews with two recruiters from the Air Force,
four from the Army, eight from the Navy, and nine from the Marine
Corps.
24. We conducted in-person interviews with seven non-citizen recruits at
the Army basic training naturalization program and four non-citizen
recruits at the Navy basic training naturalization program.
25. The notable exception is the Army which has recruited sizable numbers
of non-citizens into MAVNI and 09L.

19
 Typically, recruiters said that they inform non-citizen recruits that
they will be eligible for expedited citizenship processing once they
join the military, if the recruits are not already aware of this. However,
some recruiters stated that expedited citizenship processing does not
come up at all. Our discussions with non-citizen recruits at the Army
and Navy basic training suggested that recruits frequently were not
aware that only 1 day of honorable service in the U.S. military is
required before they can apply for citizenship. In some cases, recruits
learned about this at the recruiting station, but more often they first
heard about it at basic training. Furthermore, many of the Army and
Navy non-citizen recruits said that they found out about the opportu-
nity to get naturalized only after they arrived at basic training.

Non-citizen enlistment requirements

There are several requirements for enlisting non-citizens. We discuss
three of them here.

First, non-citizen recruits must provide proof of LPR status in the

form of an I-551 (Permanent Residence Card).26 If a non-citizen
recruit cannot produce an I-551, he or she can use a G-845, which is
a formal request for LPR verification to USCIS.

Second, non-citizen recruits who were educated in their home coun-

tries must take additional steps to verify their education credentials.27
Many of the recruiters we interviewed acknowledged that these addi-
tional steps resulted in more work for them. Often, it is difficult to
verify education credentials earned in a foreign country; this trans-

26. The Air Force, Army, and Navy have different standards regarding the
expiration and renewal of the I-551. For the Air Force, I-551s must have
an expiration date more than 2 years from the date of issue. For the
Army, I-551s that are set to expire within 6 months of accession must be
renewed. For the Navy, LPRs must be accessed into active-duty status
before the expiration of their I-551s. In addition, the Navy allows those
who become conditional permanent residents through marriage to a
citizen to enter the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) and to ship (pro-
vided their marital status does not change).
27. For additional information, see appendix C.

20
 lates into increased paperwork and documentation. Some recruiters,
however (particularly those who recruited relatively large numbers of
non-citizens), indicated that the extra verification requirements were
not especially burdensome.

Third, enlisted recruits must demonstrate that they understand

English well enough to meet Military Entrance Processing Station
(MEPS) requirements. Each service has its own process for gauging
English proficiency. In the Army, anyone who is identified as a non-
English-speaking recruit—through any part of the enlistment pro-
cess, including Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB)
testing, enlistment qualification testing, medical processing, or MEPS
pre-enlistment interviews—may be referred for evaluation.28 In the
Navy, it is not sufficient for a recruit to pass the ASVAB; Navy recruits
must demonstrate (to the Recruiter in Charge and Navy Enlisted
Classifier during the recruiting and classification interviews) that they
can read, speak, and understand English.29 Similarly, the Marine
Corps requires that the MEPS liaison noncommissioned officer cer-
tify that a recruit has sufficient ability to read, write, and speak English
to complete recruit training.

Occupation restrictions and reenlistment standards

The occupations that non-citizens can access into are somewhat lim-
ited because many jobs in the military require security clearances,
which only can be obtained by U.S. citizens. However, in each of the
services, there are many occupations that do not require clearances
and therefore do not require having citizenship.30

In total, the number of occupations that do not require citizenship is

46 in the Air Force, 90 in the Army, 30 in the Navy, and 88 in the
Marine Corps. Using recent Defense Manpower Data Center

28. This evaluation may include administration of the English Comprehen-

sion Level Test (ECLT).
29. However, no standard language interview format has been established.
30. See appendix D for service-specific lists of occupations that do not
require citizenship.

21
 (DMDC) data, we examine the number of personnel who are in these
occupations. Note that these counts include citizen and non-citizen
servicemembers and therefore represent only the potential number
of openings that could be filled by non-citizens, not the share of these
openings non-citizens hold. We find that roughly a quarter of the
enlisted active-duty inventory in the Air Force is in occupations that
can be held by non-citizens, compared with two-fifths in the Navy and
one-half in the Army and Marine Corps. This confirms what we
learned when interviewing Air Force officials: occupational restric-
tions for non-citizen recruits are greater in the Air Force than in the
other services.

In theory, once a servicemember becomes a citizen, he or she can

reclassify into a different occupation that requires a clearance. In our
conversations with Army and Navy non-citizen recruits, we learned
that some recruits do aspire to change occupations once they attain
citizenship, whereas others said that they were more interested in
serving and less concerned about the particular job they will hold.

Finally, some non-citizen recruits face limits on how long they can
serve without becoming a citizen. Currently, the Army, Navy, and
Marine Corps have no limits on the reenlistment of non-citizens.
Non-citizens can serve indefinitely without needing to naturalize.31
In contrast, non-citizens in the Air Force are restricted from reenlist-
ing without attaining citizenship. Given the relatively greater occupa-
tional restrictions that non-citizens face in the Air Force compared
with the other services, this is not surprising. Even without explicit
service limits, occupational restrictions for non-citizens may be a prac-
tical limitation to the lengths of their military careers.

31. Before 2007, the Army capped service for non-citizens at 8 years.

22
First-term performance
In this section, we examine differences in first-term performance
among non-citizen and citizen recruits, focusing on attrition behavior
at various points in the first term. First, we examine attrition within 3
months, which roughly coincides with the completion of basic train-
ing. Then we examine attrition by 36 and 48 months, which approxi-
mates completion of the first term.32

Data
The data we use for the attrition analysis (as well as for the citizenship
analysis described in the next section) come from DMDC. The
sample consists of FY99–08 enlisted accessions into the Air Force,
Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.33 Using DMDC quarterly snapshots,
we track these recruits through June 2010. The dataset includes infor-
mation on the following:

• Demographic characteristics—citizenship status, race, ethnic-

ity, gender, education, marital status, number of dependents,
and age34

• Service-related characteristics—AFQT score, time in DEP, pres-

ence of enlistment waivers, service branch, and accession date

32. We use 36 and 48 months to approximate the completion of the first

term since most enlistment contracts are for 3 or 4 years of service.
33. In the figures included in this section, we abbreviate the services as fol-
lows: USAF for the Air Force, USA for the Army, USN for the Navy, and
USMC for the Marine Corps.
34. DMDC also reports country of origin, but this field is too poorly popu-
lated to be of use. Also, the reader should keep in mind that citizenship
is distinct from a person’s race or ethnicity. In this paper, we use minority
to refer to someone who is Hispanic or not white. Therefore, both citi-
zens and non-citizens can be minorities and non-minorities.

23
 Figure 5 shows the total number of non-citizen accessions by service
and accession fiscal year.35 Across the whole sample, nearly 70,000
non-citizens enlisted between FY99 and FY08 across all four ser-
vices.36 Over the sample time period, the total number of non-citizen
accessions has fallen by about a third, from just over 8,000 in FY99 to
about 5,500 in FY08. The decline has been more rapid for the Navy,
which saw a larger decline in the number of non-citizen accessions
(41 percent between FY99 and FY08), than for the other services
(which saw declines of 28 to 33 percent over this same period).

Figure 5. Number of non-citizen accessions, by service and accession fiscal year

9,000

8,000 USAF USA

USN USMC
7,000 Total

6,000

5,000
Number

4,000

3,000

2,000

1,000

0
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Accession fiscal year

35. Since MAVNI began in FY09 and our data cover FY99–08 accessions, all
non-citizen accessions in our sample are LPRs.
36. In the empirical analyses that follow, the samples of non-citizen and cit-
izen accessions are about 15 and 5 percent smaller, respectively, than
the total number of non-citizen and citizen accessions found in the raw
data. This is because recruits who do not have complete information, in
terms of the demographic and service-related characteristics we incor-
porate into our empirical models, are dropped from the sample.

24
 As figure 5 shows, the Army accesses the largest number of non-
citizens across all of the services, followed by the Navy, the Marine
Corps, and finally the Air Force. However, when we scale non-citizen
accessions by total accessions (figure 6), the order changes.

Figure 6. Non-citizen accessions as a percentage of total accessions, by service and accession

fiscal year

7.0
USAF USA
USN USMC
6.0
Total

5.0
Percentage

4.0

3.0

2.0

1.0

0.0
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Accession fiscal year

Indeed, while non-citizens account for roughly 4 percent of acces-

sions across all of the services and of accessions for the Army and the
Marine Corps, they account for 5.6 and 2.4 percent of accessions,
respectively, for the Navy and the Air Force. As was the case for the
total number of non-citizen accessions, the non-citizen share of acces-
sions across all four services has declined over this time period by 30
percent, from just under 5 percent in FY99 to just over 4 percent in
FY08. This decline has been particularly steep for the Army and the
Marine Corps, which experienced declines in the non-citizen share of

25
 accessions of 35 and 38 percent, respectively, compared with the Air
Force and Navy, which experienced declines of 17 and 20 percent.37

Citizenship status and attrition

In this subsection, we analyze how citizenship status at accession
affects attrition behavior. Figure 7 contains raw data on 3-, 36-, and 48-
month attrition rates for non-citizen and citizen recruits across all
four services. As the figure shows, non-citizen recruits attrite at sub-
stantially lower rates than citizen recruits. Across the entire sample of
accessions, we find that 1 out of every 25 non-citizen recruits attrites
within 3 months, compared with twice that rate among citizen
recruits. By 36 and 48 months, attrition rates among non-citizen
recruits increase to roughly 1 in 5 (16.1 percent) and 1 in 6 (18.2 per-
cent), respectively. But, these rates are still considerably lower than
the rates for citizen recruits—roughly 1 in 4 (28.4 percent) by 36
months and 1 in 3 (31.9) by 48 months.

Figure 8 shows 3-, 36-, and 48-month attrition rates by citizenship

status at accession. As was the case across all services, non-citizen
recruits in each service attrite at substantially lower rates than citizen
recruits. However, there is a good deal of variation across services.
Looking at absolute differences, the attrition rate gap is largest for
the Navy. Looking at percentage differences instead, the attrition rate
gap is smallest for the Army and the Marine Corps.

37. One potential cause of the recent downward trend in the number of
non-citizen accessions and the non-citizen share of total accessions
observed in figures 5 and 6 might be the current economic crisis. In
recessionary periods when the civilian unemployment rate is high, the
military is able to access, on average, higher quality recruits from a
larger pool of available applicants. If citizen recruits have, on average,
more education or higher AFQT scores, or if recruiters view non-citi-
zens to be more difficult to recruit than citizens, fewer non-citizens
would be expected to access (both in raw numbers and as a share of
accessions). However, since the timing of the decrease in the number of
non-citizen accessions and the non-citizen share of accessions doesn’t
align perfectly with the onset of the economic crisis, further analysis is
required to fully explain these trends.

26
 Figures 7 and 8, however, do not consider the fact that non-citizen
and citizen recruits have different demographic and service-related
characteristics that are likely to affect attrition. Figure 9 displays some
of these differences.38

Figure 7. 3-, 36-, and 48-month attrition rates, non-citizen v. citizen recruits, all servicesa

35.0 Non-citizen recruits Citizen recruits

31.9

30.0 28.4

25.0
Percentage

20.0 18.2
16.1
15.0

10.0 8.2

5.0 4.0

0.0
3-month attrition 36-month attrition 48-month attrition

a. All of the differences in attrition rates between non-citizen and citizen recruits displayed here are statistically sig-
nificant at the 5-percent level.

As figure 9 shows, a substantially larger share of non-citizen than citi-

zen recruits are minorities—56.0 and 31.5 percent of non-citizen
recruits are not white and Hispanic, respectively, compared with 20.7
and 8.9 percent of citizen recruits. Non-citizen recruits, compared
with citizen recruits, also are more likely to be female (19.4 v. 16.8 per-
cent), married or with dependents at accession (17.9 v. 16.8 percent),
and age 25 or older at accession (18.6 v. 7.1 percent).

38. Table 8 in appendix E includes the complete set of demographic and

service-related characteristics used in our empirical analysis. In figure 9,
we highlight a subset of those characteristics for which there are partic-
ularly salient differences by citizenship status at accession.

27
Figure 8. 3-, 36-, and 48-month attrition rates, non-citizen v. citizen recruits, by servicea

40.0 Non-citizen recruits Citizen recruits 38.0

34.4
35.0 33.2
29.7
30.0 28.6

24.8
25.0 23.9 23.7
Percentage

20.2 21.0
20.0 17.3
16.1
14.7
15.0 12.5 13.5
11.7
9.6
10.0 8.2 8.2
6.4
4.0 4.3 4.0
5.0 2.7

0.0
USAF USA USN USMC USAF USA USN USMC USAF USA USN USMC

3-month attrition 36-month attrition 48-month attrition

a. All attrition differences between non-citizen and citizen recruits are statistically significant at the 5-percent level.

Figure 9. Selected demographic and service-related characteristics, non-citizens v. citizensa

56.0
Non-white
20.7
31.5
Hispanic
8.9
19.4 Non-citizen recruits
Female
16.8 Citizen recruits
17.9
Married/dependents
11.4
18.6
Age 25+
7.1
46.2
Tier I, AFQT>=50
59.6
19.8
Any waiver
27.3
10.8
USAF
18.7
30.9
USN
22.9

0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 70.0

Percentage

a. All differences between non-citizen and citizen recruits are statistically significant at the 5-percent level.

28
In addition, non-citizen recruits are less likely to be "high quality,"
which we define as Tier I (primarily high school graduates) and scor-
ing at least in the 50th percentile on the AFQT, and they also are less
likely to access with an enlistment waiver.39 Finally, a smaller share of
non-citizen recruits join the Air Force, while a larger share join the
Navy, relative to citizen recruits.

To understand what is driving differences in attrition rates between

non-citizen and citizen recruits, we construct a regression model to
analyze this relationship. The regression model allows us to separate
out the effect of differences in various characteristics, such as those
displayed in figure 9, from the effect of citizenship status at accession.

Specifically, we construct a logit regression model that uses citizen-

ship status as well as other demographic and service-related charac-
teristics to explain variation in attrition behavior. The demographic
characteristics include traits that do not change over time, such as
race, ethnicity, and gender, as well as characteristics that are time-
dependent and measured at accession, such as education, marital sta-
tus, number of dependents, and age. The service-related characteris-
tics are all measured at accession as well, and they include AFQT
score, whether and for how long a recruit was in DEP, whether the
recruit accessed with an enlistment waiver and of what type, service
branch, and accession trimester and fiscal year.

We run separate regressions for each of our three measures of attri-

tion (3-, 36-, and 48-month attrition). We also run separate regres-
sions on five different samples—accessions into all services versus
accessions into each of the four services. We report the regression
results as marginal effects, or the percentage-point effect of a specific
characteristic on attrition after having controlled for other character-
istics.

39. As shown in table 8 in appendix E, we group waivers into the following

categories: drug/alcohol (DA), DA test positive, serious, dependents,
medical/physical, and other.

29
 Figure 10 contains the main results from the regression analysis; each
stacked blue bar comes from a separate regression.40 The figure
shows what share of the raw difference in attrition rates we observe
between non-citizen and citizen recruits (which can be deduced from
figures 7 and 8) can be attributed to citizenship status at accession
and what share can be attributed to “other” characteristics we control
for in our regression model.

Figure 10. Differences in 3-, 36-, and 48-month attrition rates, non-citizen minus citizen
recruits, by servicea

3-month attrition 36-month attrition 48-month attrition

Total USAF USA USN USMC Total USAF USA USN USMC Total USAF USA USN USMC
0
-1.2 -1.1 -1.2 -1.5 -1.4
-3.4 -3.5 -3.7 -3.6 -3.7 -3.7 -3.1
-2 -4.2 -4.2 -4.0
-3.0 -2.6 -3.0 -2.7
-3.8
-4
Attrition rate differences
(in percentage points)

-6
-5.6
-7.9 -6.3
-8 -8.9 -10.1
-9.3 -9.9 -8.3
-11.4
-10
-12.9
-12

-14

-16
Difference attributed to citizenship status at accession
-18 Difference attributed to other characteristics

a. In each instance, the share of the raw difference that can be attributed to citizenship status at accession is statisti-
cally significantly different from zero at the 5-percent level.

For example, in figure 7 we saw that non-citizen recruits are 4.2 per-
centage points less likely than citizen recruits to attrite by 3 months
(8.2 percentage points for citizen recruits versus 4.0 percentage
points for non-citizen recruits). Figure 10 breaks down this 4.2-

40. For complete regression results, see tables 9–11 in appendix E.

30
percentage-point difference into a 3.0-percentage-point difference
that can be attributed to citizenship status at accession and a 1.2-
percentage-point difference that can be attributed to differences in
other characteristics. In other words, across all services, just under
three-quarters of the attrition rate gap between non-citizen and citi-
zen recruits that we observe in the raw data can be attributed to citi-
zenship status at accession, while the remaining quarter results from
differences in other characteristics.

Overall, figure 10 tells the same story as in the previous CNA report
on non-citizen attrition [2]; even after considering the effect of other
demographic and service-related characteristics in our regression
model, citizenship status at accession is still systematically related to
first-term attrition. Indeed, when looking across all four services, the
raw data show that non-citizen recruits are 4.2, 12.3, and 13.6 percent-
age points less likely to attrite by 3, 36, and 48 months. However, after
controlling for other characteristics, those differences fall, but only
slightly, to 3.0, 8.9, and 9.9 percentage points, and they remain statis-
tically significant. These findings are consistent with the anecdotal
evidence we gathered in our interviews of recruiters and non-citizen
recruits. The interviews revealed that, relative to citizen recruits, non-
citizen recruits generally have a stronger attachment to serving the
United States, which they now consider to be “their country,” and
have a better work ethic. Both of these observations support our find-
ings that non-citizen recruits are less likely to attrite in the first term.

Moreover, figure 10 shows that citizenship status has different effects

across the four services. Across all three measures of attrition, citizen-
ship status has the greatest effect in the Navy. At the other end of the
spectrum, citizenship status has the smallest effect on 3-month attri-
tion for the Air Force and on 36- and 48-month attrition for the
Marine Corps. At present, we cannot discern what is behind these
cross-service differences in the effect of citizenship status on attrition.
Possible explanations include things that are observable, such as dif-
ferences in country of origin, or things that are not observable, such
as differences in commitment to service or motivation.Unfortunately,
the information on country of origin in the DMDC data is insuffi-
cient—for many non-citizens, the field is blank—so we are unable to
exploit that information in our analysis.

31
Summary
Overall, our analysis of the effect of citizenship status at accession on
first-term performance is consistent with the conclusions from [2].
Looking at the raw data, we see that non-citizen recruits are signifi-
cantly and substantially less likely to attrite at three markers over the
course of the first term: 3 months, 36 months, and 48 months after
accession. Moreover, even after considering the effect of demo-
graphic and service-related characteristics, this result holds, both
across all four services and for each service individually. Again, our
observations from our interviews of recruiters and non-citizen
recruits suggest that these differences in attrition by citizenship status
might be the result of a stronger association with serving one’s coun-
try and a better work ethic among non-citizen recruits as compared
to citizen recruits.

Finally, we find that citizenship status has the largest effect on attri-
tion for the Navy across all three measures of attrition and the small-
est effect on attrition for the Air Force at 3 months and for the Marine
Corps at 36 and 48 months. Currently, we are unable to discern what
is driving differences in the effect of citizenship status on attrition
across the services. We offer as possible explanations differences in
country of origin, commitment to service, or motivation, but we are
unable to differentiate between these based on the current analysis.

32
Citizenship attainment and time-to-citizenship
Given the recent policy changes relating to naturalization of non-
citizen servicemembers (as we discuss below), it is interesting to
examine trends in citizenship attainment and time-to-citizenship. In
this section, we examine three things related to citizenship attain-
ment among servicemembers. To motivate our empirical analysis of
citizenship attainment and time-to-citizenship, we begin with a
detailed discussion of service-specific policies relating to the natural-
ization of non-citizen servicemembers. Then, we estimate the extent
to which servicemembers who enter the military as non-citizens attain
citizenship while serving. Finally, among those servicemembers who
attain citizenship while serving, we estimate time-to-citizenship, or the
time between accession and naturalization.

Service-specific naturalization policies

As mentioned earlier, with the signing of the EO in July 2002, non-
citizen servicemembers became eligible to apply for citizenship after
only 1 day of honorable service. When the previous CNA report [2]
was written, each service had its own method of assisting non-citizens
with naturalization, but all were required to provide non-citizens with
a point of contact (POC) for naturalization assistance. Typically, the
service POCs would provide non-citizens with some assistance in com-
pleting the application for citizenship, which was sent to one central-
ized USCIS processing center. Then, USCIS would contact the
applicant to complete the naturalization interview and exam at the
nearest USCIS office.

Today, the services play a much larger role in assisting with this pro-
cess. Indeed, three of the four services have partnered with USCIS
and started programs at basic training to naturalize non-citizen
recruits. The Army's basic training naturalization program, which
began in 2009, paved the way for these types of programs. In 2010 and
2011, the Navy and the Air Force, respectively, followed suit and cre-

33
 ated basic training naturalization programs. The Marine Corps has
investigated the possibility of starting a naturalization program at
basic training, but it has no immediate plans to do so.

In this section, we discuss the service-specific policies for assisting

non-citizens with naturalization, including our observations from site
visits to the Army and Navy basic training naturalization programs.
We start with the Army—the service with the most experience with
naturalizing at basic training. Then we move on to the Navy and the
Air Force, which have relatively new basic training naturalization pro-
grams, and finish with the Marine Corps.

Army
The Army's naturalization program at basic training started in 2009
in response to a need to naturalize soldiers accessing through
MAVNI.41 Under MAVNI, the recruiting pool is expanded beyond
LPRs; a non-citizen can access with certain visas, or as an asylum
seeker or refugee. Since the majority of MAVNIs access on student
and work visas, however, when they join the Army their legal status is
technically in a gray area until they receive citizenship. Hence, with
the development of MAVNI also came a need to expedite citizenship
processing. However, when the Army developed its expedited natural-
ization processing at the five Basic Combat Training locations, all
non-citizens, including LPRs, were processed for citizenship.42

Naturalizing non-citizens at basic training is mutually beneficial for

USCIS and the Army.43 For USCIS, it is preferable to naturalize non-

41. Again, for more information on MAVNI, see appendix A.

42. In addition to MAVNI, the Army has a special interpreter/translator
MOS called 09L. As described earlier, the 09L pilot program began in
2003 as a way for the Army to directly access soldiers who are heritage
or native speakers of languages that are critical to the war effort. 09Ls
originally accessed as either LPRs (majority) or citizens. Once MAVNI
opened in 2009, 09L was also open to certain visa holders, asylum seek-
ers, and refugees. There is still an advantage to naturalizing 09Ls at
basic training as well—many 09Ls will need to get security clearances
before being deployed, and only citizens can obtain security clearances.
43. The same case can be, and has been, made for the other services.

34
citizens before their graduation from basic training because at basic
training the recruits are all in one place. In contrast, once soldiers
graduate from basic training, they can go to any number of places and
for varying lengths of time. This is especially important given that
USCIS is now required to either adjudicate all citizenship applica-
tions within 6 months or supply a reason as to why an application deci-
sion has not been made in this time period [8]. For the Army,
expedited citizenship processing avoids issues of expired visas and the
potential for deportation among MAVNI soldiers. For all other non-
citizen soldiers, the sooner they are naturalized, the sooner they can
get security clearances that might be needed for deployments or
some occupations.

Ideally, non-citizen recruits who wish to be naturalized at basic train-

ing learn about this opportunity from their recruiters, who give the
recruits packets containing the forms they must fill out and informa-
tion on the required supporting documentation.44 Non-citizen
recruits complete these forms and drop them off at the Reception
Battalion. As we learned during our visit to Fort Jackson's basic train-
ing naturalization program, however, non-citizen recruits frequently
do not learn about the opportunity to be naturalized at basic training
until they arrive there. Although this causes some delays in applica-
tion processing, in general, most non-citizen recruits who want to
become citizens do so by the end of basic training.45

44. Non-citizens who wish to apply for expedited citizenship must submit
two forms: an N-400 (Application for Naturalization) and an N-426
(Request for Certification of Military or Naval Service). In addition to
these forms, the recruits should receive a study guide for the naturaliza-
tion exam and be directed to get fingerprinted and to have passport
photos taken.
45. Nonetheless, USCIS anticipates that some non-citizen recruits who wish
to become citizens may not be able to be naturalized by basic training
graduation. For these recruits, the onsite USCIS officer forwards their
citizenship applications to the local USCIS near the recruits' next duty
stations and also gives the soldiers a phone number to call to follow up
on the status of their applications.

35
 Once non-citizen recruits submit their completed forms, the natural-
ization interviews, fingerprinting, and exams all take place at the
onsite USCIS office. Although drill sergeants are important in ensur-
ing that soldiers are in the right place at the right time, the USCIS
officers do the majority of the work involved in getting the non-citizen
recruits naturalized, in terms of assistance with paperwork and other
administrative tasks.

The goal of the Army’s basic training naturalization program is to

have all non-citizens who are seeking citizenship naturalized by basic
training graduation, with the naturalization ceremony held at Family
Day (the day before basic training graduation). In general, the natu-
ralization program at Fort Jackson appears to be meeting this goal.
Altogether, it takes roughly 10 weeks to get a citizenship application
processed at Fort Jackson—from the time the application was submit-
ted to the time the recruit takes the citizenship oath.

There are two practical lessons to be learned from the Fort Jackson
experience. First, early in the basic training naturalization program,
there were delays in application processing due to one particular step
in the application adjudication—the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) name check. Since 2002, FBI name checks, which cross-check
individuals' names with FBI records, have been required for all LPR
and naturalization applications. During our visit to Fort Jackson, we
learned that the FBI name check can be the biggest hurdle in getting
recruits naturalized by the end of basic training. But, it appears that
this issue has been resolved by submitting the list of names as early in
the process as possible. Second, it is important to have a liaison to
coordinate the uniformed and USCIS sides of the process. In partic-
ular, the liaison can gather input from the drill sergeants on when
recruits might be available for their interviews and the naturalization
exam; this can increase the likelihood that recruits will be present for
their scheduled appointments.

Navy
The Navy’s basic training naturalization program, which started at
Great Lakes in 2010, was modeled after the Army's program. Before
developing the program, the Navy's policy was to educate non-citizen

36
recruits on the citizenship benefits associated with service (such as
expedited citizenship, no application fees, and familial benefits) but
to encourage them to delay submitting a citizenship application until
A-school, where MOS training begins. Starting last year, however, the
Navy partnered with USCIS to conduct naturalizations at basic train-
ing.

Following the Army's lead, the Navy has established an onsite USCIS
office (colocated with the Legal Aid office) where all administrative
tasks associated with citizenship applications occur. As we learned on
our visit to the program, the goal is to naturalize as many interested
non-citizen recruits as possible by the end of basic training. In the
case of those who apply for citizenship but do not get naturalized by
basic training graduation, their applications are forwarded to the
local USCIS office closest to the sailors' A-schools, with the ultimate
goal of making sure that all citizenship applications are processed
before the sailors go to sea.

The Navy’s basic training naturalization process starts when non-

citizen recruits show up at basic training. The Navy advertises the
opportunity to become naturalized twice—when recruits first arrive
and again during the first week of training. During that first week of
training, non-citizen recruits who are interested in applying for citi-
zenship are brought to the Legal Aid office where USCIS officials give
them the requisite paperwork and instructions on how to fill it out.46
In addition, at weekly informational sessions, non-citizen recruits can
ask Navy and USCIS personnel questions about applying for citizen-
ship. Finally, during graduation week, recruits return to the Legal Aid
office for interviews, the exam, and the naturalization ceremony.

46. Ideally, non-citizen recruits would receive the requisite paperwork from
their recruiters, but such a policy has not been put in place yet. Recruit-
ers have been instructed to inform recruits of the availability of expe-
dited citizenship processing at basic training, but—as is the case with
the Army—even this is not yet the norm. From the Navy's point of view,
the first week of training is an ideal time to have non-citizen recruits
start the naturalization process since the first 2 weeks of training are
composed of events that can be made up at a later date, whereas train-
ing becomes less flexible after week 2.

37
 In general, our impression from our visit to the naturalization pro-
gram at Great Lakes is that the program is faring well. Among non-
citizen recruits who want to get citizenship, nearly all have been able
to do so at basic training. From the point of view of both the uni-
formed personnel in the Legal Aid office and the USCIS officers, they
will do whatever it takes to ensure that non-citizen recruits seeking cit-
izenship are naturalized at basic training.

Air Force
This year, the Air Force became the third service to partner with
USCIS and bring naturalization to basic training at Lackland Air
Force Base. This program is brand new; the first applications were
processed in June 2011.

Ideally, non-citizen recruits in the Air Force are informed by their

recruiters of the availability of naturalization at basic training. The
recruiters supply interested non-citizen recruits with citizenship
application materials and ensure that their paperwork is completed
by the time the recruit ships. Also, the recruiters instruct the recruits
to go to local USCIS application support centers to be fingerprinted
no later than 30 days before shipping. Then, when the non-citizen
recruits arrive at the Reception Battalion, they submit their com-
pleted applications to begin processing. In practice, about half of
non-citizen recruits arrive with their application packets completed.
While the Air Force has achieved buy-in from the leadership at Air
Force Recruiting Service as well as from the recruiters, it will likely
take time before all non-citizens who wish to be naturalized will have
completed their applications before the start of basic training.

During week 4 of training, USCIS officials are on site at Lackland Air

Force Base. For non-citizen recruits who arrived at basic training with
completed applications, USCIS officials use this time to interview and
administer the citizenship test. For non-citizen recruits who arrived at
basic training with incomplete applications, USCIS officials assist
them with finalizing their applications and getting fingerprinted.
USCIS officials also coordinate the naturalization ceremony, which is
scheduled for the Thursday before basic training graduation, at the
end of the 8th week of training.

38
 Although the Air Force’s goal is to naturalize all non-citizen recruits
who are seeking citizenship by the time they graduate from basic
training, in practice this is only possible for non-citizen recruits who
arrive at basic training with completed applications. For non-citizen
recruits whose applications are incomplete at the start of basic train-
ing, their applications will be forwarded to USCIS offices located near
their initial skills training locations, and the applicant will be advised
to follow up with USCIS on their own.

Marine Corps
Unlike the other services, the Marine Corps has not established a
basic training naturalization program. Indeed, there is no standard
time during which naturalization takes place for non-citizens in the
Marine Corps. Instead, the Marine Corps encourages interested non-
citizen Marines to submit their citizenship applications after reaching
their first duty stations. From the Marine Corps' point of view, this is
an ideal time because it is the first opportunity in a Marine's career
when he or she will have a stable address for several years. The only
centralized assistance a non-citizen Marine currently receives from
the Marine Corps takes places at his or her first duty station, where
information about attaining citizenship may be included in the
Marine’s orientation.

Data
For our empirical analysis of citizenship attainment and time-to-
citizenship, we return to the sample of FY99–FY08 enlisted accessions
from DMDC that we used for the attrition analysis. Recall that the
data track these servicemembers quarterly through June 2010. Unfor-
tunately, there is no DMDC data field that contains the date that a
non-citizen servicemember attained citizenship. Instead, what we do
observe in the data are changes in individuals' citizenship status
between quarters. We use these changes in citizenship status from
one quarter to another to infer both citizenship attainment and the
timing of citizenship attainment. In other words, we observe whether
a person's citizenship status changed from "non-citizen" at the time of
accession to "citizen" during our sample period (our proxy for citi-
zenship attainment) and the number of quarters that passed between

39
 accession and the change in citizenship status (our proxy for time-to-
citizenship).

We recognize that our measures of citizenship attainment and time-

to-citizenship are only approximations. For citizenship attainment,
since personnel files are not automatically updated when service-
members attain citizenship, there is likely to be measurement error
in our estimate of the number of servicemembers who attain citizen-
ship during our sample period.47 To the extent that servicemembers
fail to report that they have become citizens (which they have little
incentive to do unless they want to move into an occupation that
requires a security clearance), our data will understate the true
number of servicemembers attaining citizenship.

For time-to-citizenship, measurement error arises for two reasons.

First, at best, we only have visibility on the timing of citizenship attain-
ment down to the quarter. Therefore, we cannot tell if someone
attained citizenship at the beginning or the end of that quarter. Sec-
ond, when servicemembers update their citizenship status in their
personnel files (which we have pointed out may not always happen),
they might do so with a lag. For both of these reasons, our estimate of
time-to-citizenship will overstate the true duration, at least among ser-
vicemembers who report a change in citizenship status.

These shortcomings aside, the DMDC data are the best information
currently available on citizenship attainment and time-to-citizenship,
so we use these data for our analysis.

Citizenship attainment
Across our entire sample of FY99–FY08 non-citizen accessions, we esti-
mate that a little less than half (43.8 percent) became citizens by the
end of our sample period (June 2010). Figure 11 shows the number
of servicemembers who became new citizens by fiscal year of citizen-
ship attainment; we omit FY10 because only 9 months of data are

47. In fact, it is incumbent on the servicemember to report a change in his

or her citizenship status for this to be reflected in the service personnel
files that feed into the DMDC database.

40
 available. The figure shows that, in general, the number attaining cit-
izenship is increasing over time. The number of new citizens is high-
est in the Army, followed by the Navy, the Air Force, and finally the
Marine Corps.

Figure 11. Number of new citizens by fiscal year of citizenship attainment

1,800
USAF
1,600 USA
USN
1,400
USMC
1,200
Executive
1,000 order signed
Number

800

600

400

200

0
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Fiscal year of citizenship attainment

Two features of the data displayed in figure 11 warrant further expla-

nation. The first is the sharp spike in the number of new citizens in
the Army in FY00. This spike also was observed in [2], in which the
authors attributed it to retrospective updating of citizenship status in
the year 2000. The second is the sharp increase in the number of new
citizens in the Air Force, Army, and Navy from FY02 to FY04. We
argue that this is likely a result of the Executive Order signed in FY02.
Once the reduced waiting period took effect, a large number of ser-
vicemembers who would have had to wait a while longer to apply for
citizenship immediately became eligible to apply. Indeed, when we
examine accession dates among servicemembers getting naturalized,
we find wider variation in accession dates among servicemembers get-
ting citizenship immediately after the EO was signed than in the

41
 period before the order was signed. This is consistent with the notion
that the signing of the EO eliminated the waiting period for some ser-
vicemembers who otherwise would have had to delay applying for cit-
izenship.

Figure 12 shows the percentage of non-citizen accessions that attain

citizenship by the end of our sample (June 2010) by fiscal year of
accession. We make three observations.

Figure 12. Percentage of non-citizen accessions that attain citizenship by accession fiscal year

100

90

80

Executive USAF USA

70
order signed USN USMC
60
Percentage

50

40

30

20

10

0
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Accession fiscal year

First, the recent years of data in the figure, FY07 and FY08 accessions,
are likely to be censored. Given that our period of observation
extends through only part of FY10, there has been less time for these
cohorts to attain citizenship; therefore, we should expect to see lower
rates of citizenship attainment for these recent accessions. Second, if
we ignore FY07 and FY08 accessions, the share of non-citizen acces-
sions that attain citizenship during our sample period is relatively
stable over time. The exception is the Marine Corps, which experi-
enced a more or less continuous decline in the share attaining citizen-
ship over this period. Third, the share of non-citizen accessions
attaining citizenship is much higher—by a factor of 2—in the Air
Force than in the other services. This is arguably because non-citizens
42
 in the Air Force can serve a maximum of one term; to reenlist, they
must become U.S. citizens.48 Also, because of the Air Force service
limit for non-citizens, non-citizen airmen have a great incentive to
make sure that their citizenship status gets updated once they
become citizens.

Before analyzing the determinants of citizenship attainment, we first

consider how those who attain citizenship and those who do not
differ in terms of demographic and service-related characteristics.
Figure 13 displays some of these differences.49

Figure 13. Selected demographic and service-related characteristics, non-citizen recruits by

citizenship attainmenta

29.6
API
26.2
28.9
Hispanic
33.6
22.1
Female
17.2
Attained citizenship
19.2
Married, dependents Did not attain citizenship
16.8
9.1
2 years of college+
5.8
50.4
Tier I, AFQT>=50
43.0
19.7
USAF
3.9
35.8
USA
42.7
15.3
USMC
21.2

0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Percentage

a. All of the pairwise differences displayed here are statistically significant at the 5-percent level.

48. As mentioned earlier, before 2007, the Army capped service at 8 years
without citizenship. The data in figure 12 suggest that this policy was not
particularly binding since we do not observe a large share of soldiers
who accessed as non-citizens attaining citizenship before 2007.
49. Table 12 in appendix F includes the complete set of demographic and
service-related characteristics for non-citizen recruits who did and did
not attain citizenship. In figure 13, we highlight a subset of those char-
acteristics for which there are particularly salient differences.

43
 As figure 13 shows, non-citizen recruits who attain citizenship are
more likely to be Asian/Pacific Islander (API), but less likely to be
Hispanic, than those who do not attain citizenship. Those who attain
citizenship also are more likely to be female and to be married or
have dependents. The former could be driven by a desire to increase
after-service opportunities in the private sector, while the latter could
be driven by the desire to obtain familial citizenship benefits. Those
who become citizens also are more likely to have 2 or more years of
college education and to be high quality (Tier I and scoring at least
in the 50th percentile on the AFQT) than those who do not become
citizens. This could be because higher quality recruits have their
sights set on higher skill occupations that are more likely to require
security clearances or because higher quality recruits plan to transi-
tion to the officer corps. In either case, these recruits must first get
their citizenship. Finally, we see that—across the services—non-
citizen recruits who become citizens are substantially more likely to
be in the Air Force than those who do not become citizens, which is
consistent with the Air Force policy that caps service among non-
citizens at one term.

Given these differences in demographic and service-related charac-

teristics, we construct a regression model to analyze what predicts
whether a non-citizen recruit becomes a citizen. Similar to our
approach to modeling attrition, we estimate a logit regression model
that uses demographic and service-related characteristics to explain
variation in citizenship attainment. The demographic characteristics
include race, ethnicity, gender, education, marital status, number of
dependents, and age, while the service-related characteristics include
AFQT score, service branch, and trimester and fiscal year of acces-
sion. Again, we run separate regressions for five samples—all non-
citizen accessions and non-citizen accessions in each of the services—
and we report the results as marginal effects, or the percentage-point
effect of a specific characteristic on the likelihood of attaining citizen-
ship after having controlled for other characteristics.

44
 Figure 14 contains the main results from the analysis of citizenship
attainment across all four services.50

Figure 14. Marginal effect on citizenship attainment, all servicesa

Relative USAF 40.8

to USA
API 5.1

Black 3.6 Relative to white

Other 5.6

Hispanic 1.5

Female 5.0
Married,
3.1
dependents
GED -3.2
Relative to high school diploma
2 years of
7.8
college+
Tier I, AFQT>=50 2.4

-10 0 10 20 30 40 50
Percentage points

a. All results presented in here are statistically significant at the 5-percent level.

From figure 14, we draw four main conclusions. First, being in the Air
Force substantially increases the likelihood that a non-citizen recruit
will attain citizenship. Relative to the Army (the omitted category),
non-citizen recruits in the Air Force are 40.8 percentage points more
likely to become citizens. This is consistent with the Air Force policy
that allows a non-citizen to serve a maximum of one term without
becoming a citizen. Second, we see that minority and female non-
citizen recruits are more likely to become citizens relative to their
non-minority and male counterparts. We posit, as we did earlier, that
this might be driven by a desire to increase after-service opportunities
in the private sector. Third, non-citizen recruits who are married or
have dependents are more likely to become citizens; this could be
driven by the desire to obtain familial citizenship benefits. Finally,

50. For complete regression results, see table 13 in appendix F.

45
 education and AFQT are positively related to attaining citizenship.
This is consistent with the hypotheses that higher quality non-citizen
recruits want to transition to higher skill occupations that are more
likely to require security clearances or to the officer corps. In either
case, citizenship is required.

We suspect that the effects of these characteristics on citizenship

attainment might vary across the four services, so we also run the cit-
izenship attainment regression separately for each service. Figure 15
contains the main results from these regressions, plus those from the
service-wide regression.51 In the figure, the service-specific regression
results are grouped by characteristic (to ease the cross-service com-
parison of, say, the effect of race on citizenship attainment), but they
can be differentiated from one another by the color of the bar.

Figure 15. Marginal effect on citizenship attainment, by servicea

API

Relative to white Black

Other
All services
Hispanic
USAF USA
USN USMC
Female

Married,
dependents
Relative
GED
to high
2 years of school
college+ diploma

Tier I, AFQT>=50

-10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Percentage points

a. Solid bars represent results that are statistically significant at the 5-percent level, whereas striped bars represent
results that are not statistically significant at that level.

51. Again, for complete regression results, see table 13 in appendix F.

46
 As figure 15 shows, across all services, the effect of having completed
2 or more years of college is comparatively large; these non-citizen
recruits are between 8 percentage points (for the Air Force and the
Army) and 11 percentage points (for the Marine Corps) more likely
than non-citizen recruits with only high school diplomas to become
citizens. For the other characteristics shown in the figure, we see sub-
stantial variation in the marginal effects across the services. Relative
to the other services, race, ethnicity, and marital/dependent status
have a relatively large positive effect on the likelihood that an Air
Force non-citizen recruit will become a citizen. For the Navy, gender
has a relatively large positive effect, while having a General Educa-
tional Development (GED) certificate has a relatively large negative
effect on attaining citizenship compared with the other services.
Finally, for the Marine Corps, being high quality (i.e., Tier I and scor-
ing at least in the 50th percentile on the AFQT) and having com-
pleted at least 2 years of college stand out as large positive effects
relative to the other services.

Time-to-citizenship
Among the FY99–FY08 non-citizen accessions who attained citizen-
ship by June 2010, we estimate time-to-citizenship as the number of
quarters between accession and the first time we observe a change in
citizenship status. Figure 16 shows our approximation of time-to-
citizenship by accession cohort and by service.52 Note that the recent
years of data in the figure, FY07-FY08 accessions, are likely to be down-
wardly biased. Because our period of observation extends only
through June 2010, we should expect to see lower times-to-citizenship
among non-citizen recruits from these recent cohorts because they
had a limited number of quarters in which to become citizens.

As the figure shows, time-to-citizenship generally trends downward

over our sample time period. This is consistent with the EO exerting
downward pressure on average time-to-citizenship by effectively elim-
inating the waiting period for citizenship applications. We assert that

52. When estimating time-to-citizenship, we include only the non-citizen

recruits we observe attaining citizenship. Those who do not become cit-
izens are omitted from the calculation and the ensuing analysis.

47
 the order had two separate effects, a prospective effect and a retro-
spective effect, and these are supported by the data in figure 16.

Figure 16. Time-to-citizenship by fiscal year of accession, average quarters between accession
and change in citizenship status

25

20 Executive
order signed
USAF USA
USN USMC
15
Quarters

10

0
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Accession fiscal year

First, consider the prospective effect. All else equal, time-to-citizen-

ship among non-citizen recruits who accessed after the passage of the
EO should be shorter, on average, than time-to-citizenship among
non-citizen recruits who accessed before the EO. This is because the
EO shortened the waiting period to apply for citizenship from 3 years
of honorable service to 1 day. The data in figure 16 support this; aver-
age time-to-citizenship is higher among pre-FY02 accession cohorts
than among cohorts that accessed in FY02 and beyond.

Second, consider the retrospective effect. All else equal, time-to-

citizenship by accession cohort should fall in the time leading up to
the signing of the EO. To understand why, consider two groups of
non-citizens who accessed in the years just before the signing of the
EO. The first group is made up of people who, at the time the EO was

48
signed, had already been LPRs for the requisite 3 years (and there-
fore were already eligible to apply for citizenship). Since the EO
affects time-to-citizenship through reducing the waiting period, it
should not affect this group's time-to-citizenship. The second group,
however, comprises recruits who, at the time the EO was signed, had
not been LPRs for 3 years (and were not eligible to apply for citizen-
ship). For this group, the EO shortened the waiting period, especially
for recruits who accessed in the years just before July 2002. Indeed, as
the data in figure 16 show, average time-to-citizenship fell dramati-
cally among cohorts accessing right before the signing of the EO.53

Figure 16 also shows that the trend in time-to-citizenship over our

sample period is remarkably different across the services. For all ser-
vices save the Marine Corps, time-to-citizenship has trended down-
ward over the sample period (the trend for the Marine Corps has
remained more or less flat, especially when we omit FY07 and FY08,
which we argue are downwardly biased). Also, the relative time-to-
citizenship ranking of the four services changed after the Executive
Order was signed. For pre-FY02 accessions, time-to-citizenship was
highest for the Navy and lowest for the Marine Corps. However, for
FY02 and later accessions, time-to-citizenship was highest for the Air
Force, Navy, and Marine Corps and lowest for the Army. This reversal
in the ranking of the services is caused by the relatively rapid declines
in time-to-citizenship for the Army and the Navy compared with the
other services.

Although not enough time has transpired to allow us to track time-to-

citizenship for FY09 and FY10 cohorts, we anticipate that the general
downward trend in time-to-citizenship will continue for the Air Force,
Army, and Navy because of the introduction of the naturalization pro-
grams at basic training (which started in 2009 to 2011). All else equal,
we expect that these programs will drive down time-to-citizenship to
approximately 1 quarter for the vast majority of new accessions into
the Air Force, Army, and Navy (since a majority of non-citizens who
want to become citizens will do so at basic training). It is likely that

53. Another explanation for the trend in figure 16, besides the retrospec-
tive effect offered here, could be systematic variation in the length of
time that non-citizen recruits have been LPRs before joining the service.
However, we have no way of observing this.

49
 time-to-citizenship will remain higher for the Marine Corps, in the
absence of establishing a naturalization program at basic training.

To determine what is behind these differences in time-to-citizenship,

we construct a linear regression model that uses differences in demo-
graphic and service-related characteristics to explain the variation.
The characteristics are the same as those used in the citizenship
attainment regressions (race, ethnicity, gender, education, marital
status, number of dependents, age, AFQT score, service branch, and
trimester and fiscal year of accession). Again, we run separate regres-
sions for five samples—all non-citizen accessions who became citizens
and that group split by service. We report the results in terms of how
a specific characteristic affects time-to-citizenship (measured in quar-
ters) after having controlled for other characteristics.

Figure 17 shows the main results from the time-to-citizenship analysis

across all four services. 54 We draw three conclusions from the figure.

Figure 17. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship, all servicesa

USAF 0.9
Relative
USN 3.5
to USA
-0.5 USMC

API 0.7
Relative
to white Black 1.4

Hispanic 1.5

-0.6 GED
Relative to high
-0.6 Adult education school diploma
2 years of
-0.9
college+
-0.4 Tier I, AFQT>=50

-2.0 -1.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0

Quarters

a. All results presented here are statistically significant at the 5-percent level.

54. For complete regression results, see table 14 in appendix F.

50
First, we see that being in the Navy substantially increases time-to-
citizenship; it is longer in the Navy than the Army (the omitted cate-
gory) by nearly a year (3.5 quarters). Also, relative to the Army, time-
to-citizenship is longer by nearly 1 quarter in the Air Force, whereas
it is shorter by 0.5 quarter in the Marine Corps. Second, we see that
time-to-citizenship is longer, on average, for minorities, although we
found earlier (in figure 14) that minorities are more likely than non-
minorities to attain citizenship. Finally, we find that having a GED,
having adult education, having at least 2 years of college experience,
and being high quality (Tier I and scoring at least at the 50th percen-
tile on the AFQT) are associated with shorter time-to-citizenship. For
those who are college-educated or did well on the AFQT, this might
reflect their desire to transition to higher skill occupations that are
more likely to require security clearances or to the officer corps,
which requires citizenship.

We also run the time-to-citizenship regressions separately by service,

since we suspect that the effects will vary across the services. Figure 18
contains the main results from these regressions, plus those from the
service-wide regression.55 As was the case for figure 15, the results
from the service-specific time-to-citizenship regressions are grouped
by characteristic, but they are differentiated from one another by the
color of the bar.

As figure 18 shows, for the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, being black
or Hispanic has a relatively large effect on time-to-citizenship—
increasing it by roughly 1.5 to 3 quarters. For the Navy, being API has
a similar effect. Most of the effects of education in the cross-service
regression are not significant in the service-specific regressions. The
exception is having at least 2 years of college, which decreases time-
to-citizenship in the Air Force and Navy by roughly 1 quarter. Finally,
time-to-citizenship in the Navy is significantly reduced (by nearly 1
quarter) for non-citizen accessions who are high quality (Tier I and
scoring at least at the 50th percentile on the AFQT).

55. Again, for complete regression results, see table 14 in appendix F.

51
Figure 18. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship, by servicea

API All services

Relative USAF USA
to white USN USMC
Black

Hispanic

GED
Relative
Adult education to high
school
diploma
2 years of
college+

Tier I, AFQT>=50

-2.0 -1.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0

Quarters

a. Solid bars represent results that are statistically significant at the 5-percent level, whereas striped bars represent
results that are not statistically significant at that level.

Since we would expect time-to-citizenship to be lower starting with

FY03 and later accessions owing to the EO, and since the relative
ranking of the services with respect to time-to-citizenship shifted
before and after FY02 (figure 16), we also run the time-to-citizenship
regression on a sample after the EO (i.e., FY03–08 accessions). Figure
19 contains the main results from this analysis across the services.56

There are two main differences between these results and those for
all accessions (shown in figure 17). First, with the exception of the ser-
vice branch variables, the effects for all other variables have the same
sign as in the full sample regression, but they are attenuated—so
much so for the education variables that they are now statistically

56. For complete regression results, see table 15 in appendix F.

52
 insignificant. Second, as we suspected, the change in the relative
ranking of services in terms of time-to-citizenship we observed in
figure 16 has been borne out here as well. When considering all acces-
sions from FY99 to FY08, time-to-citizenship was longest (by a
considerable amount) for the Navy, followed by the Air Force, then
the Army, and finally the Marine Corps. As figure 19 shows, among
non-citizens who accessed after the Executive Order was signed, time-
to-citizenship was longest for the Marine Corps, followed by the Navy,
the Air Force, and finally (by a considerable amount) the Army.
Again, when data on time-to-citizenship for FY09 and FY10 accessions
become available, we expect to see that the Marine Corps will con-
tinue to have the longest time-to-citizenship, while time-to-citizenship
in the Air Force, Army, and Navy will drop considerably because of
the recent introduction of naturalization programs at basic training
for these three services.

Figure 19. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship, FY03–08 (post-EO) accessions, all servicesa

USAF 2.2

Relative to USA USN 2.9

USMC 3.1

API 0.3
Relative to white
Black 0.8

Hispanic 1.1

0.0 GED

-0.1 Adult education Relative to high school diploma

2 years of
-0.3
college+
-0.3 Tier I, AFQT>=50

-2.0 -1.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0

Quarters

a. Solid bars represent results that are statistically significant at the 5-percent level, whereas striped bars represent
results that are not statistically significant at that level.

53
 Figure 20 shows the results when we run service-specific regressions
on the reduced sample of FY03–08 accessions.57

Figure 20. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship, FY03–FY08 accessions, by servicea

All services
Relative API USAF USA
to white USN USMC
Black

Hispanic

GED

Relative Adult education

to high
school 2 years of
diploma college+

Tier I, AFQT>=50

-2.0 -1.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0

Quarters

a. Solid bars represent results that are statistically significant at the 5-percent level, whereas striped bars represent
results that are not statistically significant at that level.

A comparison of figure 18 (full sample) and figure 20 (reduced sam-

ple) reveals that the main conclusions are not affected by the change
in the sample:

• Being black or Hispanic continues to have a relatively large,

positive effect on time-to-citizenship for the Army, Navy, and
Marine Corps.

• Being API has a similarly sized, positive effect for the Navy.

57. Again, for complete regression results, see table 15 in appendix F.

54
 • Most education effects are not significant (except for having at
least 2 years of college experience in the Air Force).

• Being high quality (Tier I and scoring at least at the 50th per-
centile on the AFQT) is still associated with shorter time-to-
citizenship.

Summary
From our analysis of citizenship attainment, we arrive at four main
conclusions:

1. Being in the Air Force substantially increases the likelihood

that a non-citizen recruit will attain citizenship. Relative to the
Army, non-citizen recruits in the Air Force are 40.8 percentage
points more likely to become citizens. This is consistent with
the fact that the Air Force allows non-citizens to serve a maxi-
mum of one term without becoming a citizen.

2. Minority and female non-citizen recruits are more likely to

become citizens relative to their non-minority and male coun-
terparts. We posit that this might be driven by a desire to
increase after-service opportunities in the private sector. We
also find that race and ethnicity have a relatively larger effect in
the Air Force than in the other services, whereas the effect of
being female is larger in the Navy than in the other services.

3. Non-citizen recruits who are married or have dependents are

more likely to become citizens, an effect that could be driven by
the desire to obtain familial citizenship benefits. We find that
this effect is relatively larger in the Air Force than in the other
services.

4. Education and AFQT are positively related to attaining citizen-

ship, and this effect is larger in the Marine Corps than in the
other services. This finding is consistent with the hypotheses
that either these higher quality non-citizen recruits are looking
to transition to higher skill occupations, which are more likely
to require security clearances, or they are looking to transition
to the officer corps. In either case, citizenship is required.

55
 With regard to our analysis of time-to-citizenship, we have three main
conclusions:

1. When considering all accessions from FY99 through FY08, we

find that time-to-citizenship is longest for the Navy (and consid-
erably so), followed by the Air Force, the Army, and finally the
Marine Corps. However, when we limit the sample to accessions
since the signing of the EO, we see instead that the Marine
Corps has the longest time-to-citizenship among post-FY02
accessions, followed by the Navy, the Air Force, and finally (by
a substantial amount) the Army. We expect to see that—among
more recent non-citizen accessions—time-to-citizenship
among accessions to the Air Force, Army, and Navy will fall con-
siderably as a result of their naturalization programs at basic
training.

2. Time-to-citizenship is longer for minorities, especially among

non-citizen accessions in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.

3. The following characteristics are associated with shorter time-

to-citizenship: having a GED, having adult education, having at
least 2 years of college experience, and being high quality (i.e.,
Tier I and scoring at least at the 50th percentile on the AFQT).
The effect of 2 years of college is especially large for the Air
Force and Navy, while the effect of being high quality is espe-
cially large for the Navy. For those who are college educated or
scored well on the AFQT, again this might be caused by a desire
to transition to higher skill occupations, which are more likely
to require security clearances, or to transition to the officer
corps. In either case, citizenship is required.

56
Conclusions and recommendations
Our analysis substantiates the three reasons why non-citizens are a
potentially valuable enlisted recruiting resource. First, there is an
ample supply of non-citizens in the United States who are eligible for
military service. We estimate that approximately 1.2 million non-
citizens (about half of whom are male) are in the desired age range
(18 to 29) and have the requisite education, permanent resident sta-
tus, and English ability for enlistment. Although this number may
seem small relative to the overall U.S. recruitable population, non-
citizens are still an attractive recruiting resource given that immigra-
tion is projected to be the only source of net growth in the U.S. pop-
ulation among 18- to 24-year-olds in the coming decades. Second, we
find that a substantial share of the recruitable U.S. non-citizen popu-
lation comes from diverse backgrounds and potentially possesses lan-
guage and cultural skills that are of strategic interest to the U.S.
military. Third, non-citizen recruits are significantly and substantially
less likely than citizen recruits to attrite in the first term. In addition,
we find substantial variation in the effect of citizenship status at acces-
sion on attrition by service, with the effect being the largest for the
Navy and the smallest for the Air Force and Marine Corps.

Given the recent policy changes that have streamlined naturalization

for non-citizen servicemembers, we are not surprised to find that cit-
izenship attainment has increased and time-to-citizenship has
decreased over our period of observation. Our statistical analysis sug-
gests that the rate of citizenship attainment is higher for the Air Force
(likely because of the one-term limit without citizenship), for minor-
ities, for women, for those who are married or have dependents, and
for those who have more education or higher AFQT scores. We also
find that time-to-citizenship is longer for minority recruits but shorter
for recruits who have more education or higher AFQT scores. In addi-
tion, in the period following the Executive Order, time-to-citizenship
has been longest for the Marine Corps, followed by the Navy, the Air
Force, and the Army. We expect that time-to-citizenship will remain

57
 relatively high for the Marine Corps but will fall for the other services
in the coming years because of their naturalization programs at basic
training. When the nation is no longer at war, however, the EO will
expire and, unless current law is changed, time-to-citizenship will rise
once again as the 1-year waiting period goes into effect. In addition,
the impetus behind naturalizing at basic training will disappear.

Policy implications
Four key policy implications arise from this analysis:

1. The services should consider developing strategies to recruit

non-citizens more effectively, especially if the recruiting envi-
ronment becomes challenging again. As our analysis shows,
there is an ample pool of qualified non-citizen recruits who
have lower first-term attrition rates than their citizen counter-
parts.58 Moreover, these non-citizen recruits are more diverse,
on average, than citizen recruits and are likely to have language
and cultural skills of strategic interest to the U.S. military.

2. DOD and USCIS both would benefit from sharing their admin-
istrative data. On one hand, if USCIS notified DOD when ser-
vicemembers' applications were approved, DOD would have
more visibility on who attains citizenship and when. On the
other hand, if DOD kept USCIS apprised of who attrites from
the military, USCIS would be better positioned to know
whether servicemembers are not completing their service obli-
gations in exchange for expedited citizenship processing.59

58. There is one caveat to this assertion. It is possible that the size of the
attrition rate gap between non-citizen and citizen recruits might
decrease as the services recruit more non-citizens if, for instance, the
marginal recruit’s commitment to serving his or her country decreases
as the pool of non-citizen enlistees increases.
59. As mentioned earlier, USCIS has the authority to revoke citizenship if a
servicemember leaves the military before completing five years of ser-
vice with an other-than-honorable discharge. To our knowledge, how-
ever, USCIS does not have sufficient visibility on attrition from the
service to be able to enforce this, nor does this currently seem to be a
priority for USCIS.

58
 3. Basic training naturalization programs have proved to be a
viable option for quickly and efficiently naturalizing large
groups of non-citizen servicemembers. The programs already
in place at the Army, Navy, and Air Force basic training should
be supported, and the Marine Corps should be encouraged to
investigate further the possibility of adding such a program to
its basic training.

4. The Army’s and Navy’s experiences suggest that getting recruit-

ers involved in disseminating citizenship information and
paperwork to non-citizen recruits greatly increases the speed
and ease of basic training naturalizations. Of course, these rec-
ommendations relating to the basic training naturalization pro-
grams will be irrelevant when the United States is no longer at
war, unless policies governing the naturalization of non-citizen
servicemembers are changed yet again.

Areas for future research

In closing, we note five areas for future research. We devote a para-
graph to each.

First, it would be useful to test whether the differences in the effect of

citizenship status at accession on attrition that exist across the services
(as seen in figure 10) can be explained by things we can observe in
our data. One potential explanation is differences in country of ori-
gin, but the current amount information on country of origin in the
DMDC data is insufficient for us to explore this.

Second, we could examine whether certain observable characteristics

are more closely associated with lower first-term attrition among non-
citizen recruits than other characteristics. If this is the case, this could
help the services determine which non-citizen recruits are particu-
larly likely to remain in the service through the end of the first term
and, therefore, should be targeted for enlisted recruiting. Also, simi-
lar to this idea, we could explore whether certain observable charac-
teristics are more or less predictive of attrition for non-citizen recruits
than they are for citizen recruits.

59
 Third, we could explore other measures of first-term performance
besides first-term attrition. For example, we could test whether non-
citizen recruits advance more quickly, in addition to attriting less
during the first term.

Fourth, we could examine whether non-citizens are likely to be “first

term” or “career” servicemembers by exploring how likely they are to
remain in the military beyond the first term after becoming citizens.
On one hand, non-citizen recruits might seek citizenship to enhance
the opportunities available to them in the military, since citizenship is
a prerequisite for a security clearance. This could be a signal that non-
citizens who become citizens have a greater tendency to stay in the
military past the first term. On the other hand, non-citizens might
join the military for the purpose of attaining citizenship, or they
might decide once they attain citizenship that they wish to pursue
opportunities outside the military, and thus would be less likely to stay
beyond the first term.

Fifth, the current study examines what factors lead to higher or lower
average time-to-citizenship. In future work, we could consider other
measures of time-to-citizenship—in particular measures that capture
the spread (or variance) in time-to-citizenship that is otherwise
masked when looking at an average. Given the service-specific differ-
ences in policies and practices relating to the naturalization of ser-
vicemembers, it would be particularly interesting to do a cross-service
comparison using alternative measures of time-to-citizenship.

60
Appendix A

Appendix A: Military Accessions Vital to the

National Interest (MAVNI)
On November 25, 2008, the Secretary of Defense authorized MAVNI
as a pilot program [9], to recruit non-citizens who are not LPRs but
who have skills that are “vital to national interest,” through U.S. Code
504(b(2)).61 Recruits who access under MAVNI possess skills that are
considered to be vital to national interests, including health care pro-
fessional and specific language and cultural skills. MAVNI was initially
granted the authority to enlist up to 1,000 recruits and was scheduled
to end either on December 31, 2009, or when the recruiting limit had
been met [10]. Of the 1,000 MAVNI recruits, 890 were allocated to
the Army, 100 to the Navy, and 10 to the Air Force.62

After December 31, 2009, MAVNI was granted a series of 60-day

extensions and was finally officially extended for an additional 2 years
on August 17, 2010. With this extension, new recruiting totals were
established. An additional 1,500 recruits were authorized for the pro-
gram, including 1,000 for the Army (100 of which are health care pro-
fessionals), 250 for the Navy, and 125 each for the Air Force and
Marine Corps.63 Also, given the United States’ recent heightened
security concerns, the 2-year extension added new DOD require-
ments that the services address security screening procedures. This

61. Undocumented or unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for enlist-

ment under MAVNI. In addition, non-citizens must already be living in
the United States to be eligible for MAVNI; that is, MAVNI will not spon-
sor visas or recruit non-citizens who are overseas [9]. For more informa-
tion on MAVNI eligibility, see [10].
62. The Marine Corps did not participate in the first year of MAVNI.
63. Since the Navy provides medical personnel to the Marine Corps, the
Marine Corps allotment is only for recruits with language or cultural
skills.

61
 Appendix A

has caused MAVNI recruiting to be put on hold indefinitely until

USD(I) approves the services’ screening policies.

Although the service secretaries individually have the authority to

determine what skills are vital to the national interest, with MAVNI
DOD established general criteria that apply across the services. For
health care professionals applying for MAVNI, recruits must be
trained in a medical specialty for which the services are under-
manned and must meet all criteria required for their medical spe-
cialty, in addition to any criteria for foreign-trained medical
personnel recruited under other DOD authorities. Recruits must
demonstrate English proficiency and commit to a minimum of 3
years of active duty or 6 years in the Selected Reserve. Those with spe-
cific language and cultural skills who would like to enlist through
MAVNI must possess language and culture capabilities that are criti-
cal to DOD (see table 1) and must demonstrate language proficiency.
In addition, recruits must meet all existing enlistment criteria (with
the exception of LPR status) and must enlist for a minimum of 4 years
of active duty.

Table 1. MAVNI critical languagesa

Albanian Igbo Punjabi
Amharic Indonesian Russian
Arabic Korean Sindhi
Azerbaijani Kurdish Sinhalese
Bengali Lao Somali
Burmese Malay Swahili
Cambodian-Khmer Malayalam Tamil
Chinese Moro Turkish
Czech Nepalese Turkmen
Hausa Pashto Urdu
Hindi Persian (Dari & Farsi) Yoruba
Hungarian Polish
a. Source: [10]. These are the languages authorized with the original pilot program.
Once MAVNI reopens, additional languages will be included.

62
Appendix A

The Army has recruited the majority of MAVNI recruits who have
accessed to date. Indeed, on February 23, 2009, the Army was
assigned the task of recruiting 932 of the allotted 1,000 MAVNI
recruits, of which 789 had language and cultural skills and 143 were
health care professionals [11]. The Army targeted its recruiting for
language and cultural skills in large cities, including New York City,
Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas, but it recruited health care
professionals nationwide. Army health care professional MAVNI
recruits were required to pass an English test, but all Army MAVNI
recruits were expected to score 50 or higher on the AFQT (which is a
higher threshold than that used for citizen recruits. As the biggest
recruiter of MAVNI recruits, the Army took the lead on developing
the additional security protocols required by DOD.

63
 Appendix A

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64
Appendix B

Appendix B: Foreign languages

The strategic language list (SLL) for FY11, shown in table 2, contains
three groups of languages. “Immediate languages” are those for
which DOD has an immediate need. Languages that DOD anticipates
needing in the future are called “emerging languages.” The third cat-
egory—"enduring languages"—consists of languages that DOD
expects to continue to need during the next 10 to 15 years. (Note:
The services have the authority to add or delete languages from the
emerging and enduring lists and to promote languages from the
emerging or enduring lists to the immediate lists, but not vice versa.)

Table 2. FY11 SLLa

Immediate languages
Baluchi Pashto-Mghan (Pushtu) Persian-Mghan (Dari) Urdu
Iraqi Arabic Persian-Iranian (Farsi) Somali Yemeni Arabic
Emerging languages
Amharic Hindi Punjabi (Western) Ukrainian
Azerbaijani Kazakh Singhalese Uzbek
Bengali Krio Tamazight
Divehi Lingala Tamil
Fulani Nepalese Telegu
Enduring languages
Algerian Arabic Igbo Maranao Yakan
Brazilian Portuguese Ilocano Modern Standard Arabic Yoruba
Cambodian Indonesian Russian
Cantonese Japanese Serbo-Croatian
Cebuano Javanese Sorani
Czech Korean Spanish
Egyptian Arabic Kurmanji Swahili
European Portuguese Lao Tagalog
French Levantine Arabic Tausug
Georgian Maghrebi Arabic Thai
Gulf Arabic Maguindanao Turkish
Hausa Malay Turkmen
Hebrew Mandarin Vietnamese
a. Source: [12].

65
 Appendix B

Table 3 shows how we group languages in the ACS data.

Table 3. ACS language groups

Group Languages
Spanish Spanish
French French French Creole Patois
Cajun
Other European Afrikaans Hungarian Romanian
Albanian Irish Gaelic Russian
Armenian Italian Serbian
Bulgarian Jamaican Creole Serbocroatian
Croatian Lettish Slovak
Czech Lithuanian Swedish
Danish Macedonian Ukrainian
Dutch Norwegian Yiddish
Finnish Pennsylvania Dutch Other European
German Polish
Greek Portuguese
Arabic and other Arabic Kurdish Syriac
Middle Eastern Amharic Pashto Turkish
Hebrew Persian
Languages of India Bengali Marathi Telugu
Gujarathi Nepali Urdu
Hindi Panjabi Other Indian
Kannada Sinhalese Other Pakistani
Malayalam Tamil
Chinese Chinese Formosan Mandarin
Cantonese
Other Asian and Pacific Bisayan Japanese Sebuano
Island Burmese Korean Tagalog
Chamorro Laotian Thai
Hawaiian Malay Tongan
Hmong Miao-yao, Mien Vietnamese
Ilocano Mon-Khmer, Cambodian Other Asian
Indonesian Samoan Other Pacific Island
African African Ibo Swahili
Bantu Kru Yoruba
Cushite Mande Other African
Fulani
Native American Aleut-Eskimo Cherokee Navaho
American Indian Dakota Zuni
Apache Keres Other American Indian

66
Appendix C

Appendix C: Verifying non-citizens' education

credentials
Education credentials must be verified before enlistment. For non-
citizens, often there are extra steps that need to be taken since their
education credentials typically are from a foreign country. Each ser-
vice has its own method for doing so, as we describe here.

For the Air Force, non-citizens accessing with a high school degree or
more from foreign schools must have an educational-level evaluation
before enlisting [13]. This evaluation can be obtained through a state
Department of Education, a college or university accredited by
Accredited Institutions of Postsecondary Education (AIPE), or an
authorized credential evaluation agency that is a member of the
National Association of Credential Evaluation Services (NACES).
Non-citizen recruits are responsible for fees associated with the edu-
cation-level evaluation, including those associated with translating
documents into English.

For the Army, non-citizens accessing with a high school degree or

more from foreign schools must have their documents evaluated by a
state Board of Education or any degree-granting college or university
accredited by AIPE or NACES [14].64 If a non-citizen recruit's educa-
tion documentation is not in English, the Army will permit a bilingual

64. Non-citizen recruits who attended schools in the following regions are
exempt from the education credential verification requirement (and
therefore their education credentials will be treated in the same
manner as those from any U.S. school): Federated States of Micronesia,
Republic of the Marshall Islands, Commonwealth of the Northern Mar-
iana Islands, Guam, American Samoa, Canada, Puerto Rico, Virgin
Islands, Palau, Department of Defense Dependent School System, and
overseas American-sponsored elementary and secondary schools
assisted by the U.S. Department of State.

67
 Appendix C

soldier to translate the documentation, and the written translation

must be signed by the soldier with a commissioned officer's signature
as a witness. Recruiting battalions that do not have a soldier with a
skilled language identifier may designate recruiting personnel to
translate foreign documents.

For the Navy, foreign education credentials must be evaluated using

the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Offic-
ers' (AACRAO) Projects in International Education Research World
Series publications [15]. Foreign language education documents
require certified English translation, obtained by the non-citizen
recruit, and both versions must be submitted for review. These docu-
ments must be submitted at least 3 working days before the beginning
of MEPS processing.

Finally, the Marine Corps requires that, before enlistment, foreign

credentials be verified either by the non-citizen's home country's con-
sulate,65 a state Board of Education, a university or college listed in
the Directory of Postsecondary Institutions, or a foreign language ser-
vice that is accredited by AACRAO [16].

65. This is not applicable to hostile countries, as described in [16].

68
Appendix D

Appendix D: Occupations that do not require

citizenship

Table 4. Occupations that do not require citizenship: Air Force

Code Name
1S0X1 Safety
2S0X1 Materiel Management
2T0X1 Traffic Management
2T1X1 Vehicle Operations
2T2X1 Air Transportation
2T3X1 Special Purpose Vehicle and Equipment Maintenance
2T3X2 Special Vehicle Maintenance
2T3X7 Vehicle Maintenance Control & Analysis
3E0X1 Electrical Systems
3E0X2 Electrical Power Production
3E1X1 Heating, Ventilation, AC, & Refrigeration
3E2X1 Pavement and Construction Equipment
3E3X1 Structural
3E4X1 Utilities Systems
3E4X2 Liquid Fuel Systems Maintenance
3E4X3 Pest Management
3E5X1 Engineering
3E6X1 Operations Management
3M0X1 Services
3N0X1 Public Affairs
3N1X1 Regional Band
3N2X1 Premier Band
3S0X1 Personnel
4A0X1 Health Services Management
4A1X1 Medical Materiel
4A2X1 Biomedical Equipment
4B0X1 Bioenvironmental Engineering
Source: Dr. Hector M. Acosta, Section Chief, Marketing Research & Analysis, Headquarters, Air Force
Recruiting Service.

69
 Appendix D

Table 4. Occupations that do not require citizenship: Air Force (continued)

Code Name
4C0X1 Mental Health Service
4D0X1 Diet Therapy
4E0X1 Public Health
4H0X1 Cardiopulmonary Laboratory
4J0X2 Physical Medicine Apprentice
4M0X1 Aerospace Physiology
4N0X1 Medical Services
4N1X1 Surgical Services
4P0X1 Pharmacy
4R0X1 Diagnostic Imaging
4T0X1 Medical Laboratory
4T0X2 Histopathology
4V0X1 Optometry
4Y0X1 Dental Assistant
4Y0X2 Dental Laboratory
6C0X1 Contracting
6F0X1 Financial Management
9TA45 Administrative Aptitude Area
9TG43 General Aptitude Area
Source: Dr. Hector M. Acosta, Section Chief, Marketing Research & Analysis, Headquarters, Air Force
Recruiting Service.

70
Appendix D

Table 5. Occupations that do not require citizenship: Army

Code Name
09L Interpreter/Translator
11B Infantryman
11C Indirect Fire Infantryman
13B Cannon Crewmember
13S Field Artillery Surveyor
15A Aviation Life Support Systems Repairer
15B Aircraft Powerplant Repairer
15D Aircraft Powertrain Repairer
15F Aircraft Electrician
15G Aircraft Structural Repairer
15H Aircraft Pneudraulics Repairer
15M UH-1 Helicopter Repairer
15R AH-64 Attack Helicopter Repairer
15S OH-58D/ARH Helicopter Repairer
15T UH-60 Helicopter Repairer
15U CH-47 Helicopter Repairer
15V Observation/Scout Helicopter Repairer
15X AH-64A Armament/Electrical/Avionics Systems Repairer
15Y H-64D Armament/Electrical/Avionic Systems Repairer
19D Cavalry Scout
19K M1 Armor Crewman
21B Combat Engineer
21C Bridge Crewmember
21D Diver
21E Construction Equipment Operator
21G Quarrying Specialist
21J General Construction Equipment Operator
21K Plumber
21M Firefighter
21P Prime Power Production Specialist
21Q Powerline Distribution Specialist
21R Interior Electrician
21S Topographic Surveyor
21T Technical Engineer
Source: United States Army PERSCOM MOS Smart Book, http://www.apd.army.mil/Home/Links/PDFFiles/MOS-
Book.pdf.

71
 Appendix D

Table 5. Occupations that do not require citizenship: Army (continued)

Code Name
21V Concrete and Asphalt Equipment Operator
21W Carpentry and Masonry Specialist
31E Internment/Resettlement Specialist
42R Army Bandsperson
44B Metal Worker
44C Financial Management Technician
44E Machinist
45B Small Arms/Artillery Repairer
45K Armament Repairer
52C Utilities Equipment Repairer
52D Power-Generation Equipment Repairer
62B Construction Equipment Repairer
63A M1 Abrams Tank System Maintainer
63B Wheeled Vehicle Mechanic
63D Artillery Mechanic
63H Tracked Vehicle Repairer
63J Quartermaster and Chemical Equipment Repairer
63M Bradley Fighting Vehicle System Maintainer
68A Biomedical Equipment Specialist
68D Operating Room Specialist
68E Dental Specialist
68G Patient Administration Specialist
68H Optical Laboratory Specialist
68J Medical Logistics Specialist
68K Medical Laboratory Specialist
68M Nutrition Care Specialist
68P Radiology Specialist
68Q Pharmacy Specialist
68R Veterinary Food Inspection Specialist
68S Preventive Medicine Specialist
68T Animal Care Specialist
68V Respiratory Specialist
68W Health Care Specialist
68X Mental Health Specialist
74D Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear Specialist
79R Recruiter
79T Recruiting and Retention NCO (ARNG)
Source: United States Army PERSCOM MOS Smart Book, http://www.apd.army.mil/Home/Links/PDFFiles/MOS-
Book.pdf.

72
Appendix D

Table 5. Occupations that do not require citizenship: Army (continued)

Code Name
79V Retention and Transition NCO (USAR)
88H Cargo Specialist
88K Watercraft Operator
88L Watercraft Engineer
88M Motor Transport Operator
88N Transportation Management Coordinator
88P Railway Equipment Repairer
88T Railway Section Repairer
88U Railway Operations Crewmember
92A Automated Logistical Specialist
92F Petroleum Supply Specialist
92G Food Service Specialist
92L Petroleum Laboratory Specialist
92M Mortuary Affairs Specialist
92R Parachute Rigger
92S Shower/Laundry and Clothing Repair Specialist
92W Water Treatment Specialist
92Y Unit Supply Specialist
94H Test, Measurement, and Diagnostic Equipment Maintenance Support Specialist
Source: United States Army PERSCOM MOS Smart Book, http://www.apd.army.mil/Home/Links/PDFFiles/MOS-
Book.pdf.

73
 Appendix D

Table 6. Occupations that do not require citizenship: Navy

Code Name
ABE Aviation Boatswain's Mate - Equipment
ABF Aviation Boatswain's Mate - Fuels
ABH Aviation Boatswain's Mate - Handling
AD Aviation Machinist Mate
AM Aviation Structural Mechanic
AME Aviation Structural Mechanic - Equipment
AS Aviation Support Equipment Technician
BM Boatswain's Mate
BU Builder
CE Construction Electrician
CM Construction Mechanic
CS Culinary Specialist
DC Damage Controlman
EA Engineering Aid
EM Electricians Mate
EN Engineman
EO Equipment Operator
GSE Gas Turbine Systems Technician - Electrical
GSM Gas Turbine Systems Technician - Mechanical
HM Hospital Corpsman
LS Logistics Specialist
MM Machinist Mate
MR Machinery Repairman
MU Musician
PR Aircrew Survival Equipmentman
PS Personnel Specialist
RP Religious Program Specialist
SH Ship's Serviceman
SW Steelworker
UT Utilitiesman
Source: United States Navy Personnel Command, Enlisted Community Management Branch, http://www.pub-
lic.navy.mil/bupers-npc/enlisted/community/Pages/default.aspx.

74
Appendix D

Table 7. Occupations that do not require citizenship: Marine Corps

Code Name
0121 Personnel Clerk
0151 Administrative Clerk
0311 Rifleman
0313 Light Armored Vehicle Crewman
0331 Machine Gunner
0341 Mortarman
0351 Infantry Assaultman
0352 Antitank Assault Guided Missileman
0411 Maintenance Management Specialist
0811 Field Artillery Cannoneer
1141 Electrician
1142 Electrical Equipment Repair Specialist
1161 Refrigeration Mechanic
1171 Hygiene Equipment Operator
1316 Metal Worker
1341 Engineer Equipment Mechanic
1345 Engineer Equipment Operator
1361 Engineer Assistant
1371 Combat Engineer
1391 Bulk Fuel Specialist
1812 M1A1 Tank Crewman
1833 Assault Amphibious Vehicle Crewman
1834 Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle Crewman
2131 Towed Artillery Systems Technician
2141 Assault Amphibious Vehicle Repairer/Technician
2146 Main Battle Tank Repairer/Technician
2147 Light Armored Vehicle Repairer/Technician
2148 Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle Repairer/Technician
2161 Machinist
3043 Supply Administration and Operations Clerk
3051 Warehouse Clerk
3052 Packaging Specialist
3112 Distribution Management Specialist
3361 Subsistence Supply Clerk
Source: Department of the Navy. Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) Marine Corps Manual. Marine Corps
Order 1200.17, May 2008.

75
 Appendix D

Table 7. Occupations that do not require citizenship: Marine Corps (continued)

Code Name
3381 Food Service Specialist
3432 Finance Technician
3451 Financial Management Resource Analyst
3521 Automotive Organizational Mechanic
3531 Motor Vehicle Operator
3533 Logistics Vehicle System Operator
4133 Marine Corps Community Services Marine
4341 Combat Correspondent
4421 Legal Services Specialist
4612 Combat Camera Production Specialist
5524 Musician
5831 Correctional Specialist
6048 Flight Equipment Technician
6062 Aircraft Intermediate Level Hydraulic/Pneumatic Mechanic
6072 Aircraft Maintenance Supply Equipment Hydraulic/Pneumatic/Structures Mechanic
6073 Aircraft Maintenance Support Equipment Electrician/ Refrigeration Mechanic
6074 Cryogenics Equipment Operator
6092 Aircraft Intermediate Level Structures Mechanic
6111 Helicopter/Tiltrotor Mechanic-Trainee
6112 Helicopter Mechanic - CH-46
6113 Helicopter Mechanic - CH-53
6114 Helicopter Mechanic - UN/AH-1
6116 Tiltrotor Mechanic - MV-22
6122 Helicopter Power Plants Mechanic - T-58
6123 Helicopter Power Plants Mechanic - T-64
6124 Helicopter Power Plants Mechanic - T-400/T-700
6132 Helicopter/Tiltrotor Dynamic Components Mechanic
6152 Helicopter Airframe Mechanic - CH-46
6153 Helicopter Airframe Mechanic - CH-53
6154 Helicopter Airframe Mechanic - UN/AH-1
6156 Tiltrotor Airframe Mechanic - MV-22
6212 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Mechanic - AV-8/TAV-8
6213 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Mechanic - EA-6
6214 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Mechanic
6216 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Mechanic - KC-130
6217 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Mechanic - F/A-18
6222 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Power Plants Mechanic - F-402
Source: Department of the Navy. Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) Marine Corps Manual. Marine Corps
Order 1200.17, May 2008.

76
Appendix D

Table 7. Occupations that do not require citizenship: Marine Corps (continued)

Code Name
6223 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Power Plants Mechanic - J-52
6226 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Power Plants Mechanic - T-56
6227 Fixed-wing Aircraft Power Plants Mechanic - F-404
6251 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Airframe Mechanic-Trainee
6252 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Airframe Mechanic - AV-8/TAV-8
6253 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Airframe Mechanic - EA-6
6256 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Airframe Mechanic - KC-130
6257 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Airframe Mechanic - F/A-18
6281 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Safety Equipment Mechanic- Trainee
6282 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Safety Equipment Mechanic - AV-8/TAV-8
6283 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Safety Equipment Mechanic - EA-6
6286 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Safety Equipment Mechanic - KC-130/V-22
6287 Fixed-Wing Aircraft Safety Equipment Mechanic - F/A-18
6672 Aviation Supply Clerk
7011 Expeditionary Airfield Systems Technician
7051 Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting Specialist
7314 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Air Vehicle Operator
Source: Department of the Navy. Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) Marine Corps Manual. Marine Corps
Order 1200.17, May 2008.

77
 Appendix D

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78
Appendix E

Appendix E: Attrition analysis

In this appendix, we report the full comparison of demographic and
service-related characteristics among non-citizen and citizen recruits
in table 8. Tables 9 through 11 present our full attrition regression
results.

Table 8. Characteristics of non-citizen and citizen recruits,

FY99–FY08 accessionsa
Non-citizen Citizen
Characteristic recruits recruits
Attrition
3-month 4.0% 8.2% *
36-month 16.1% 28.4% *
48-month 18.2% 31.9% *
Race
White 44.0% 79.3% *
Asian Pacific Islander 27.7% 2.7% *
Black 26.5% 16.9% *
Other 1.9% 1.2% *
Hispanic 31.5% 8.9% *
Female 19.4% 16.8% *
Married or dependents 17.9% 11.4% *
Age
<=18 25.8% 37.0% *
19 18.5% 22.4% *
20-24 37.1% 33.5% *
25+ 18.6% 7.1% *
Education
Dropout 3.3% 3.1% *
GED 4.0% 8.4% *
High school diploma 81.4% 82.0% *
Adult education 4.0% 3.1% *
2 years of college + 7.2% 3.4% *
Tier I, AFQT>=50 46.2% 59.6% *

79
 Appendix E

Table 8. Characteristics of non-citizen and citizen recruits,

FY99–FY08 accessionsa (continued)
Non-citizen Citizen
Characteristic recruits recruits
Delayed Entry Program (DEP) 89.2% 88.8% *
DEP>=3 months 51.3% 54.5% *
Waiverb
Any 19.8% 27.3% *
Drug/alcohol (DA) 4.7% 7.7% *
DA test positive 0.3% 1.0% *
Serious 3.9% 8.7% *
Dependents 3.0% 1.7% *
Medical/physical 6.3% 7.7% *
Other 3.4% 4.1% *
Service branch
USAF 10.8% 18.7% *
USA 39.7% 39.4%
USN 30.9% 22.9% *
USMC 18.6% 19.0% *
Accession trimester
ONDJ 28.0% 27.6%
FMAM 28.6% 27.1% *
JJAS 43.4% 45.3% *
N (1,000s) 57.3 1,473.0
Percent of sample 3.7% 96.3%
a. * denotes a statistically significant difference at the 5-percent level.
b. Waiver types are not mutually exclusive since recruits can access with
more than one waiver.

80
Appendix E

Table 9. Marginal effect on 3-month attrition (in percentage points)a

Variable Total USAF USA USN USMC
Non-citizen recruit -3.0 * -2.6 * -3.0 * -3.8 * -2.7 *
Race
Asian/Pacific Islander -3.8 * -3.5 * -4.1 * -4.0 * -3.2 *
Black -1.8 * -1.8 * -2.6 * -1.6 * -0.5 *
Other -5.4 * -5.1 * 14.1 * -5.5 * -7.7 *
Hispanic -5.8 * -5.4 * -5.1 * -6.9 * -6.6 *
Female 5.1 * 3.3 * 6.8 * 3.5 * 5.7 *
Married, dependents 1.0 * -0.4 * 1.1 * 1.2 * 2.9 *
Age
19 0.6 * 0.5 * 0.2 0.8 * 1.0 *
20-24 0.9 * 0.7 * 0.3 * 1.0 * 1.5 *
25+ 2.2 * 1.3 * 1.9 * 2.0 * 4.5 *
Education
Dropout -2.6 * 4.3 * -5.3 * 2.0 * 5.6 *
GED 1.6 * 1.9 * 2.3 * 2.3 * 3.6 *
Adult education 0.9 * 1.2 * 1.2 * 0.9 * 0.6 *
2 years of college+ -2.9 * -2.7 * -3.3 * -2.7 * -1.6 *
Tier I, AFQT>=50 -2.1 * -1.7 * -1.8 * -2.9 * -2.0 *
Enlistment waiver
Drug/alcohol (DA) 0.1 -1.1 -0.7 -0.5 0.2
DA test positive -0.4 13.2 -1.7 * 3.8 * 1.0 *
Serious -0.9 * -0.9 * -1.9 * 0.4 * -0.3
Dependents 0.6 * 1.0 * -0.8 * 0.7 * 0.1
Medical/physical 1.4 * 0.7 * 1.4 * 1.8 * 1.7 *
Other 1.1 * 0.2 0.3 0.9 * 0.6 *
Delayed Entry Program (DEP) 0.1 0.6 * 0.0 -0.7 * -0.8 *
DEP>=3 months -1.0 * -1.3 * -0.9 * -1.9 * -1.3 *
Service branch
USAF -1.3 * -- -- -- --
USN 2.2 * -- -- -- --
USMC 1.2 * -- -- -- --
Accession trimester
FMAM 0.8 * 0.4 * 1.1 * 0.3 * 0.5 *
JJAS -0.7 * 0.1 -0.5 * -0.7 * -1.0 *
Accession fiscal year

81
 Appendix E

Table 9. Marginal effect on 3-month attrition (in percentage points)a (continued)

Variable Total USAF USA USN USMC
2000 -2.0 * -1.7 * -6.9 * -2.1 * 0.2
2001 -3.0 * -4.5 * -7.3 * -3.2 * 0.2
2002 -3.5 * -5.2 * -7.7 * -4.4 * 1.2 *
2003 -3.1 * -3.6 * -7.1 * -3.6 * -0.6 *
2004 -2.1 * -2.6 * -5.1 * -4.1 * -0.5 *
2005 -3.6 * -1.6 * -8.7 * -3.5 * -1.5 *
2006 -5.1 * -1.2 * -12.8 * -3.2 * -0.5 *
2007 -4.1 * 1.5 * -11.8 * -2.6 * -1.3 *
2008 -3.9 * -1.5 * -9.8 * -1.7 * -2.1 *
N (1,000s) 1,530.0 281.6 602.9 354.6 291.0
a. * denotes statistical significance at the 5-percent level.

82
Appendix E

Table 10. Marginal effect on 36-month attrition (in percentage points)a

Variable Total USAF USA USN USMC
Non-citizen recruit -8.9 * -7.9 * -9.3 * -11.4 * -5.6 *
Race
Asian/Pacific Islander -9.3 * -9.1 * -10.6 * -8.9 * -7.0 *
Black -1.9 * -0.7 * -4.1 * -0.5 * -1.8 *
Other -11.8 * -12.9 * 3.7 -8.3 * -15.7 *
Hispanic -10.0 * -12.2 * -9.3 * -9.1 * -11.9 *
Female 12.7 * 7.0 * 21.4 * 4.9 * 10.9 *
Married, dependents 1.9 * -3.1 * 3.2 * 1.2 * 2.5 *
Age
19 -0.2 -0.6 * -0.6 * -0.4 * 0.6 *
20-24 -1.8 * -3.0 * -2.5 * -1.9 * 0.1
25+ -0.9 * -4.4 * -1.5 * -1.0 * 4.0 *
Education
Dropout -0.6 * -5.6 -6.6 * 10.3 * 10.7 *
GED 8.3 * 6.7 * 10.4 * 11.6 * 7.1 *
Adult education 5.5 * -5.0 * 6.1 * 8.6 * 1.8 *
2 years of college+ -7.3 * -6.0 * -9.0 * -6.7 * -6.4 *
Tier I, AFQT>=50 -4.9 * -5.5 * -3.9 * -5.7 * -4.8 *
Enlistment waiver
Drug/alcohol (DA) 2.8 * -1.2 1.1 2.6 * 2.4 *
DA test positive 8.5 * 5.1 8.5 * 16.5 * 7.5 *
Serious 2.8 * 2.7 * 0.6 * 6.0 * 2.3 *
Dependents 0.5 1.8 -4.5 * 1.0 1.2 *
Medical/physical 0.9 * -0.2 0.3 0.8 * 2.1 *
Other 4.6 * 2.9 * 2.5 * 4.2 * 1.4 *
Delayed Entry Program (DEP) -2.5 * -2.4 * -2.5 * -3.7 * -2.6 *
DEP>=3 months -5.1 * -4.7 * -5.2 * -7.6 * -4.4 *
Service branch
USAF -5.4 * -- -- -- --
USN -1.0 * -- -- -- --
USMC -8.9 * -- -- -- --
Accession trimester
FMAM 0.0 0.5 * -0.9 * 0.4 * 0.0
JJAS -2.4 * -0.8 * -3.8 * -1.2 * -1.8 *
Accession fiscal year

83
 Appendix E

Table 10. Marginal effect on 36-month attrition (in percentage points)a (continued)
Variable Total USAF USA USN USMC
2000 -1.7 * -1.8 * -4.9 * -2.7 * -0.5
2001 -3.4 * -3.8 * -7.6 * -4.3 * -1.7 *
2002 -3.3 * 0.3 -8.9 * -4.9 * -1.1 *
2003 -2.2 * 0.8 * -7.0 * -2.3 * -2.6 *
2004 -2.0 * 0.7 -6.2 * -3.0 * -2.7 *
2005 -5.2 * -0.6 -12.4 * -3.2 * -3.3 *
2006 -7.4 * -1.5 * -16.3 * -4.4 * -3.8 *
2007 -7.3 * 0.3 -16.2 * -5.4 * -4.4 *
N (1,000s) 1,321.2 245.4 517.4 313.8 244.5
a. * denotes statistical significance at the 5-percent level.

84
Appendix E

Table 11. Marginal effect on 48-month attrition (in percentage points)a

Variable Total USAF USA USN USMC
Non-citizen recruit -9.9 * -8.3 * -10.1 * -12.9 * -6.3 *
Race
Asian/Pacific Islander -10.2 * -10.6 * -11.3 * -10.2 * -7.7 *
Black -1.0 * -0.7 * -3.9 * 0.3 -0.4
Other -14.0 * -14.9 * 13.3 -11.0 * -16.1 *
Hispanic -10.5 * -12.3 * -9.5 * -9.5 * -12.2 *
Female 12.4 * 7.5 * 24.0 * 5.0 * 10.4
Married, dependents 1.8 * -3.5 * 3.8 * 1.6 * 2.5
Age
19 -0.2 -0.5 * -0.4 -0.7 * 0.2
20-24 -2.0 * -3.1 * -2.5 * -2.2 * -0.2
25+ -1.1 * -5.3 * -1.6 * -1.5 * 3.6 *
Education
Dropout 0.0 -3.5 -6.5 * 10.8 * 12.8 *
GED 10.0 * 8.1 * 12.0 * 12.6 * 7.6 *
Adult education 6.0 * -6.3 * 7.0 * 9.9 * 1.7 *
2 years of college+ -7.5 * -6.7 * -9.3 * -7.5 * -7.9 *
Tier I, AFQT>=50 -5.2 * -5.4 * -3.1 * -6.0 * -5.3 *
Enlistment waiver
Drug/alcohol (DA) 3.7 * -2.3 3.4 * 3.2 * 3.2 *
DA test positive 11.7 * 7.3 11.3 * 17.8 * 10.8 *
Serious 4.4 * 3.6 * 1.7 * 6.6 * 3.4 *
Dependents 1.0 * 1.7 -5.6 * 1.0 1.8 *
Medical/physical 1.1 * -0.7 0.5 0.8 * 2.4 *
Other 5.0 * 3.0 * 2.7 * 4.6 * 2.1 *
Delayed Entry Program (DEP) -3.4 * -3.1 * -3.2 * -4.1 * -2.9 *
DEP>=3 months -5.7 * -5.1 * -5.9 * -8.2 * -4.7 *
Service branch
USAF -6.3 * -- -- -- --
USN -2.6 * -- -- -- --
USMC -12.2 * -- -- -- --
Accession trimester
FMAM 0.0 0.5 * -0.8 * 0.4 0.0
JJAS -2.3 * -1.3 * -3.5 * -1.6 * -1.6 *
Accession fiscal year

85
 Appendix E

Table 11. Marginal effect on 48-month attrition (in percentage points)a (continued)
Variable Total USAF USA USN USMC
2000 -1.5 * -1.5 * -4.9 * -2.3 * -0.9 *
2001 -2.0 * -0.6 -6.5 * -3.2 * -1.8 *
2002 -1.6 * 2.0 * -7.4 * -3.3 * -1.2 *
2003 -1.0 * 1.0 * -6.4 * 0.3 -2.7 *
2004 -1.5 * 0.9 * -6.2 * -1.8 * -3.1 *
2005 -4.4 * -0.8 -12.4 * -2.5 * -3.7 *
2006 -6.1 * -2.0 * -15.5 * -3.6 * -4.0 *
N (1,000s) 1,006.6 218.5 290.1 283.1 214.9
a. * denotes statistical significance at the 5-percent level.

86
Appendix F

Appendix F: Citizenship analysis

In this appendix, we report the full comparison of demographic and
service-related characteristics among non-citizen recruits who do and
do not attain citizenship during our sample period (table 12) as well
as our full citizenship attainment and time-to-citizenship regression
results (tables 13 through 15).

87
 Appendix F

Table 12. Characteristics of non-citizen recruits by citizenship

attainment, FY99-FY08 accessionsa
Did not attain
Characteristic Attained citizenship citizenship
Race
White 41.2% 46.1% *
Asian Pacific Islander 29.6% 26.2% *
Black 26.8% 26.2%
Other 2.3% 1.5% *
Hispanic 28.9% 33.6% *
Female 22.1% 17.2% *
Married or dependents 19.2% 16.8% *
Age
<=18 24.7% 26.6% *
19 17.3% 19.4% *
20-24 37.6% 36.7% *
25+ 20.4% 17.3% *
Education
Dropout 2.9% 3.6% *
GED 3.0% 4.8% *
High school diploma 81.5% 81.4%
Adult education 3.5% 4.5% *
2 years of college + 9.1% 5.8% *
Tier I, AFQT>=50 50.4% 43.0% *
Service branch
USAF 19.7% 3.9% *
USA 35.8% 42.7% *
USN 29.2% 32.2% *
USMC 15.3% 21.2% *
Accession trimester
ONDJ 28.7% 27.4% *
FMAM 29.2% 28.1% *
JJAS 42.1% 44.5% *
N (1,000s) 25.1 32.3 *
Percent of sample 43.8% 56.2% *
a. * denotes a statistically significant difference at the 5 percent level.

88
Appendix F

Table 13. Marginal effect on citizenship attainment (in percentage points)a

Variable Total USAF USA USN USMC
Race
Asian/Pacific Islander 5.1 * 9.2 * 3.9 * 2.7 * 4.4 *
Black 3.6 * 6.3 * 0.8 3.1 * 6.0 *
Other 5.6 * 11.5 * -- 1.7 8.7
Hispanic 1.5 * 7.3 * -0.9 -0.6 3.1 *
Female 5.0 * 1.3 4.1 * 7.5 * 5.5 *
Married, dependents 3.1 * 5.9 * 3.4 * 2.0 5.6 *
Age
19 -1.6 * 0.1 -3.1 * -0.5 -1.4
20-24 1.5 * 1.8 -2.3 * 4.5 * 2.4 *
25+ 5.8 * 3.8 0.7 12.7 * 4.0
Education
Dropout 2.0 -24.2 6.6 * -4.2 5.7
GED -3.2 * -9.1 -2.6 * -7.6 * -2.3
Adult education -2.0 5.1 -1.0 -3.9 * -1.1
2 years of college+ 7.8 * 7.8 * 7.6 * 8.4 * 10.5 *
Tier I, AFQT>=50 2.4 * -1.8 1.8 * 2.5 * 4.4 *
Service branch
USAF 40.8 * -- -- -- --
USN 2.5 * -- -- -- --
USMC 0.4 -- -- -- --
Accession trimester
FMAM -0.8 0.0 0.1 -1.3 -2.6 *
JJAS -0.3 1.3 1.9 * -2.1 * -2.7 *
Accession fiscal year
2000 1.5 3.5 5.0 * 1.3 -1.1
2001 4.6 * 12.8 * 5.4 * 6.0 * 1.7
2002 4.1 * 11.6 * 9.1 * 6.5 * -8.5 *
2003 7.3 * 10.9 * 18.1 * 9.2 * -13.3 *
2004 4.5 * 17.5 * 7.8 * 10.0 * -9.8 *
2005 2.5 * 13.4 * 7.1 * 6.5 * -12.4 *
2006 0.1 14.4 * 6.9 * -1.1 -14.5 *
2007 -7.7 * 6.7 * -3.6 * -3.5 * -22.9 *
2008 -13.3 * -0.8 -10.0 * -7.6 * -28.2 *
N (1,000s) 57.3 6.2 22.7 17.7 10.7
a. * denotes statistical significance at the 5 percent level.

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 Appendix F

Table 14. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship (in quarters)a

Variable Total USAF USA USN USMC
Race
Asian/Pacific Islander 0.7 * 0.2 0.4 2.0 * 0.6
Black 1.4 * 0.9 * 1.8 * 1.6 * 2.9 *
Other 0.5 0.2 -- 1.5 * 0.4

Hispanic 1.5 * 1.0 * 1.9 * 1.4 * 2.9 *

Female -0.1 -0.4 * -0.3 0.0 1.8 *
Married, dependents 0.1 -0.5 * 0.5 * 0.3 -0.2
Age
19 0.1 0.3 0.1 -0.2 0.3
20-24 0.7 * 0.7 * 0.5 0.6 * 1.1 *
25+ 0.7 * 0.2 0.9 * 0.2 0.7
Education
Dropout -0.2 -3.4 -2.3 * 1.7 * -5.8
GED -0.6 * 1.3 -0.5 -0.1 -1.1
Adult education -0.6 * -0.5 -0.2 -0.8 -0.9
2 years of college+ -0.9 * -1.1 * -0.5 -1.0 * -0.8
Tier I, AFQT>=50 -0.4 * -0.1 0.0 -0.7 * -0.4
Service branch
USAF 0.9 * -- -- -- --
USN 3.5 * -- -- -- --
USMC -0.5 * -- -- -- --
Accession trimester
FMAM -0.4 * -0.8 * -0.7 * -0.4 0.8 *
JJAS -0.9 * -0.7 * -1.5 * -0.9 * 0.1
Accession fiscal year
2000 -2.3 * -1.0 * -4.3 * -3.2 * -0.1
2001 -4.6 * -4.3 * -5.1 * -7.0 * -1.5 *
2002 -5.3 * -3.0 * -7.6 * -8.5 * -0.4
2003 -7.1 * -4.3 * -10.8 * -10.0 * 1.1 *
2004 -7.5 * -4.9 * -9.6 * -12.5 * 0.2
2005 -7.9 * -4.6 * -11.0 * -12.0 * 0.5
2006 -8.3 * -5.3 * -11.4 * -12.5 * -0.1
2007 -9.1 * -6.1 * -11.7 * -13.7 * -1.7 *
2008 -11.3 * -8.5 * -13.5 * -16.1 * -3.6 *
N (1,000s) 25.1 5.0 9.0 7.3 3.8
a. * denotes statistical significance at the 5 percent level.

90
Appendix F

Table 15. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship, post-FY02 accessions (in quarters)a

Variable Total USAF USA USN USMC
Race
Asian/Pacific Islander 0.3 * -0.1 -0.3 1.5 * 0.6
Black 0.8 * 0.2 1.0 * 1.1 * 1.4 *
Other 0.4 -0.4 -- 1.0 * 0.5
Hispanic 1.1 * 0.8 * 1.1 * 1.0 * 2.6 *
Female -0.2 -0.3 -0.3 -0.1 0.4
Married, dependents 0.4 * -0.3 0.6 * 0.2 0.5
Age
19 0.2 0.4 -0.4 -0.1 1.0 *
20-24 0.6 * 0.7 * 0.4 0.3 1.0 *
25+ 0.5 * 0.3 0.6 0.1 0.3
Education
Dropout 1.9 * -4.4 -1.5 2.3 * -5.9
GED 0.0 3.2 0.2 -0.3 -1.3
Adult education -0.1 4.8 0.1 -0.2 -0.8
2 years of college+ -0.3 -1.0 * -0.1 -0.5 -0.7
Tier I, AFQT>=50 -0.3 * -0.2 0.3 -0.8 * -0.4
Service branch
USAF 2.2 * -- -- -- --
USN 2.9 * -- -- -- --
USMC 3.1 * -- -- -- --
Accession trimester
FMAM -0.7 * -0.3 -1.4 * -0.4 0.7
JJAS -1.0 * -0.5 * -2.3 * -0.4 0.4
Accession fiscal year
2004 -0.4 * -0.6 * 1.2 * -2.4 * -0.9 *
2005 -0.7 * -0.3 -0.2 -2.0 * -0.7
2006 -1.3 * -1.1 * -0.6 * -2.4 * -1.2 *
2007 -2.1 * -1.9 * -1.1 * -3.6 * -2.8 *
2008 -4.3 * -4.2 * -2.8 * -6.0 * -4.6 *
N (1,000s) 13.7 2.8 5.2 4.0 1.7
a. * denotes statistical significance at the 5 percent level.

91
 Appendix F

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92
References
[1] United States Department of Defense. Quadrennial Defense
Review Report. Feb. 2010.

[2] Anita U. Hattiangadi et al. Non-Citizens in Today’s Military:

Final Report. CNA Research Memorandum D0011092.A2/
Final. Apr. 2005.

[3] Lynn G. O’Neil et al. “Non-Citizens in the U.S. Military.” Mas-

ter’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Mar. 2004.

[4] Trevor O. Robichaux. “Special Forces Recruiting: The Opera-

tional Need for Targeted Recruitment of First and Second
Generation Americans.” Master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate
School, Dec. 2008.

[5] Table 2. Projections of the Population by Selected Age Groups and Sex
for the United States: 2010 to 2050. U.S. Census Bureau, Popula-
tion Division, NP2008-T2. Aug. 2008.

[6] Paul D. Sutton and Brady E. Hamilton. Recent Trends in Births

and Fertility Rates through 2010. U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
National Center for Health Statistics. Jun. 2011.

[7] Jeffery S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn. U.S. Population Projections,

2005-50. Pew Research Center. Feb. 11, 2008.

[8] Public Law 110-382. Military Personnel Citizenship Processing Act.

122 Stat. 4087. Oct. 9, 2008.

[9] Margaret D. Stock. “Ten Things That Immigration Lawyers

Should Know About the Army’s New Non-Citizen Recruiting
Program.” Law Offices of Carl Shusterman. U.S. Immigration: The
Essential Guide, 2009, last accessed Aug. 31, 2011, at http://

93
 www.shusterman.com/pdf/mavniarmyimmigrationfor
nonimmigrants209.pdf.

[10] “Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI)

Recruitment Pilot.” The Official Home of the Department of
Defense, last accessed Aug. 31, 2011, at http://
www.defense.gov/news/mavni-fact-sheet.pdf.

[11] Telephone conversation with Capt Carol Stahl, ASA M&RA.

Oct. 11, 2011.

[12] United States Department of Defense. Department of Defense

Strategic Language List. Mar. 2011.

[13] United States Air Force Recruiting Service. Recruiting Proce-

dures for the Air Force. AFRS Instruction 36-2001. Apr. 2005.

[14] Army Regulation 601–210. Active and Reserve Components Enlist-

ment Program. Jun. 2007.

[15] United States Navy Recruiting Command. Navy Recruiting

Manual–Enlisted, COMNAVCRUITCOMINST 1130.8H, Volume
II—Eligibility Requirements. Jan. 2010.

[16] Marine Corps Order P1100.72B. Military Personnel Procurement

Manual, Volume 2, Enlisted Procurement. Dec. 1997.

94
List of figures
Figure 1. Recruitable non-citizen population . . . . . . . . . 12

Figure 2. Region of origin among non-citizens age

18 to 29 who have at least a high school degree
and speak English well . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Figure 3. Language spoken at home among non-citizens

age 18 to 29 who have at least a high school
degree and speak English well . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Figure 4. Language spoken at home among non-citizens

age 18 to 29 who have more than a high school
degree and speak English well . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Figure 5. Number of non-citizen accessions, by service

and accession fiscal year. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Figure 6. Non-citizen accessions as a percentage of total

accessions, by service and accession fiscal year . . . 25

Figure 7. 3-, 36-, and 48-month attrition rates, non-citizen

v. citizen recruits, all services . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Figure 8. 3-, 36-, and 48-month attrition rates, non-citizen

v. citizen recruits, by service. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Figure 9. Selected demographic and service-related

characteristics, non-citizens v. citizens . . . . . . . . 28

Figure 10. Differences in 3-, 36-, and 48-month attrition

rates, non-citizen minus citizen recruits, by
service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Figure 11. Number of new citizens by fiscal year of

citizenship attainment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

95
 Figure 12. Percentage of non-citizen accessions that attain
citizenship by accession fiscal year . . . . . . . . . . 42

Figure 13. Selected demographic and service-related

characteristics, non-citizen recruits by
citizenship attainment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Figure 14. Marginal effect on citizenship attainment,

all services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Figure 15. Marginal effect on citizenship attainment,

by service. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Figure 16. Time-to-citizenship by fiscal year of accession,

average quarters between accession and change
in citizenship status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Figure 17. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship,

all services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Figure 18. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship,

by service. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Figure 19. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship,

FY03–08 (post-EO) accessions, all services . . . . . . 53

Figure 20. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship,

FY03–FY08 accessions, by service . . . . . . . . . . . 54

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List of tables
Table 1. MAVNI critical languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Table 2. FY11 SLL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Table 3. ACS language groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Table 4. Occupations that do not require citizenship:

Air Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Table 5. Occupations that do not require citizenship:

Army . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Table 6. Occupations that do not require citizenship:

Navy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Table 7. Occupations that do not require citizenship:

Marine Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Table 8. Characteristics of non-citizen and citizen

recruits,
FY99–FY08 accessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Table 9. Marginal effect on 3-month attrition

(in percentage points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Table 10. Marginal effect on 36-month attrition

(in percentage points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Table 11. Marginal effect on 48-month attrition

(in percentage points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Table 12. Characteristics of non-citizen recruits by

citizenship attainment, FY99-FY08 accessions . . . . 88

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 Table 13. Marginal effect on citizenship attainment
(in percentage points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Table 14. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship

(in quarters) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Table 15. Marginal effect on time-to-citizenship,

post-FY02 accessions (in quarters) . . . . . . . . . . 91

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CRM D0025768.A2/Final

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