I'm a little worried that if we implement the "service guarantees citizenship" scheme you allude to, we'll be forced to fight a war against an interstellar insect race soon after.
OP's proposal seem more like what the Roman empire did granting citizenship to conscripted barbarians, which worked or not depending on your perspective.
I also think that the much higher level of taxation inflicted on the (local) Roman population certainly didn’t help, as I feel that by the 3rd-4th century many parts of the Roman hinterland were much less populated than they should have been (had not the higher taxation hindered the Roman demographics, that is). In a way the outside-the-limes “barbarians” had the comparative advantage of not having had to pay those very high taxes, and most probably that was good for their (the “barbarians’”) demographics. And on a large enough time scale demographics is destiny.
The fall of the western empire is more accurately described as a fragmentation, after which live mostly went on like it did before. The true downfall of Roman civilization in Italy happened during the decades-long unsuccessful attempt by the Eastern Empire to recover the peninsula.
A boat comes in from EU with immigrants, men get off the boat, are handled a Union uniform and are put right back on another boat down south to the war.
Do you believe we are not already having an inter-domain/dimensional information war with something of a nature you describe? (Kind of kidding)
> No I didn’t say that or allude to it
Did you forget what you put in your own comment?
>>> There would be no need for sign-on bonus, you could add additional qualifications for g.i. benefits in the form of naturalization.
All of what I said requires effort, which is not guaranteed, they are options for the motivated, which is what we want those coming to this country to hold of personal value. Have a nice day though.
We are going dark here.
If we don’t do things like this, what do we expect these people who need to care for themselves and potentially their families are going to be willing to do?
We also have to be serious in consideration of the current climate, and having recruiting down will just lead to drafts or forced conscriptions if the climate turns further.
I wish we wouldn’t have enabled the current belief in the country being an opportunity for foreign actors to come to without using the proper mechanisms. Unfortunately it has and we are now in a situation that is untenable. We can hold back in fear of the “invasion” or come up with plans to integrate and/or assimilate these individuals in their family that will be a benefit or leave them to languish to our detriment.