Sponsors (3)
The bill expands enlistment and clarifies some naturalization eligibility and language for noncitizen groups—potentially strengthening recruitment and inclusivity—while removing a statutory naturalization pathway and shifting key determinations to agencies, creating greater administrative discretion, legal uncertainty, and implementation burdens.
DACA recipients with valid EADs can enlist and, if they do, gain access to military pay, training, and benefits while expanding the pool of potential recruits to help fill personnel needs.
People from Freely Associated States and residents of American Samoa/Swain's Island get explicit eligibility pathways for naturalization under §1440, formalizing routes to citizenship for these groups.
The bill clarifies that executive departments must follow a specified subsection when making honorable‑service and separation determinations, which can standardize adjudications and improve consistency in some cases.
The bill deletes §328 (the separate one‑year aggregate service naturalization pathway), removing a statutory route to citizenship that some service members relied on.
Shifting honorable‑service and separation determinations to executive departments and deleting statutory language increases administrative discretion, reduces predictability, and likely requires more documentation and adjudicative reliance on agency interpretation.
Narrowing the statutory language about qualifying hostilities/operations (e.g., inserting 'foreign force, and') could exclude some operations, create ambiguity about which hostilities count, and produce inconsistent agency decisions and delays for applicants.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Allows DACA EAD holders to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces and revises service-based naturalization rules to add Freely Associated States nationals and change honorable-service determinations.
Introduced July 10, 2025 by Salud Carbajal · Last progress July 10, 2025
Adds people who hold a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Employment Authorization Document (EAD) to the list of individuals eligible to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces. It also removes one existing immigration provision and revises another to add nationals from the Freely Associated States, use gender-neutral language, and change how departments determine honorable service and separations for service-based immigration benefits. The bill makes targeted statutory edits: it amends military enlistment eligibility in Title 10 and strikes and updates sections in the Immigration and Nationality Act related to naturalization through military service. It does not create new funding or explicit timelines in the text provided.