America's Foederati

It's a little disconcerting that both presidential candidates in the last American election supported the same policy of giving citizenship to illegal immigrants who serve in the armed forces.*  Do you really want foreigners staffing your military? Are they loyal to the flag? It's generally a bad idea to train and equip someone to kill who doesn't necessarily share your interests, like what happened with the US helping and arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

Indeed, there is a Late-Western-Roman-Empire quality to the policy of bestowing citizenship upon immigrants who will serve in your army, and I don't mean that in a good way. It took a few centuries but Ancient Rome's increasing reliance on recruiting Germanic barbarians as "foederati" to fight its battles lead to those same foederati sacking Rome multiple times including what is generally accepted as the final blow to the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD.

Rewarding those who fight for your country with citizenship is the right thing to do because a) you want to assimilate those to whom you teach modern warfare, not alienate them and cause them to develop their own distinct ethnic identity like the Romans did, and b) what a jerk you would be if you didn't. That said, the policy still makes me uneasy because it comes across as desperate.

And I realize that there is a universe of difference between what is going on with American immigration today and the Romans in the 3rd-5th centuries,^ I just thought it was interesting connection.

*: I don't really understand how an illegal immigrant could find himself (or herself) in the military anyway since you'd figure there would be some background and security checks, but whatever.
^: I wish someone would explain that Ancient Rome and contemporary USA are incommensurable to Ron Paul.