She said the entire program has been a disaster.
She said of 5 contracts she has written under the program one has actually made it in. And that one is now a US Citizen, my friend went to her basic training graduation where they also did the citizenship ceremony.
Evidently the high failure rate she is experiencing is the same across the board for all recruiting stations, and on top of that it takes about 5 times the paperwork and effort. So for that reason recruiters hate doing them. She said some of the more complex enlistments they get credit for more than one enlistment toward their mission they must meet every month, but they didn't for these. So if you have to enlist 10 new recruits to make your mission and you only have so many hours a day focusing on cases that are a lot easier is the natural path.
The failure rate stems mostly from the inability of the applicants to provide adequate documentation that passes the required checks. Most showed up in this country without any of identity documents and that presents a huge issue- even US born citizens enlisting must have certified copies of birth certificates and other documents.
On top of that a huge monkey wrench is that evidently immigration activists have been telling the people applying that they are eligible to be sworn as citizens the day after they sign a contract and swear the first oath, before they ever go to basic training. And while there is disagreement on the outside of the DOD if they are the DOD is clear that they won't help anyone get sworn until they finish basic- and they do the ceremony at the basic training graduation.
But a few of the activists have managed to get some of these folks sworn in as citizens before shipping to basic training somehow by other officials. Word has spread, and now many are demanding the recruiters help them with that (not the recruiters job) or are intentionally sandbagging the process by being slow to do what is needed trying to get sworn in elsewhere while they stay in limbo status as contacted to join but not yet shipped to basic training. She said others appear to be sandbagging trying to delay shipping for basic to see what other options come up, because as long as they are in the limbo of being contracted and not shipped they are supposed to be protected from immigration action, and that some immigration activists has been advising some of them to do just that to delay shipping as long as possible to see if other options become available.
The problem is that even though you take the oath when you contract you really are not enlisted yet and you have no obligation, so you can back out anytime until you swear the oath a second time when you ship to basic training. So if they get sworn in as citizens based just on an enlistment contract before basic training they can then just say they don't want to join anymore, and you can't undo the citizenship.
On top of all that in 2016 they discovered many people in the program had used forged documents to enlist that were not caught and they suspended all further action until they could get a better hand on how to properly do checks and ensure people were not using faked documentation.
So basically it's been a huge mess. So she said many of the recruiters are at their wits end and tired of spending so much effort on this and getting beat up for not meeting mission, so when given a chance many are terminating contracts if they applicant gives them cause. She said she has one still open and that guy is sincerely doing anything and everything needed and she is working with him, but she had another that was missing appointments, taking weeks or longer to produce documentation, cancelled two appointments for MEPs and she got tired to him and cancelled his contract the last time he no-showed for an appointment.
The system was created without any idea how to handle people with no proper identification documents or history, and that delays things. Then some people used forged documents causing the whole system to be halted while they tried to straighten it out. Then bad information was given to applicants about when they were eligible for citizenship and some are being advised to game the system. And the recruiters have been expected to deal with the mess and the huge amount of work required for these applicants without any reduction in their normal workload or any extra credit for successfully enlisting any of these applicants so the recruiters have no incentives to go the many extr miles required, especially when it's either detracting from them making mission that month because they spend so much time and effort on cases that have very low rates of success.
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