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Pentagon to recruit aliens on visas
BY PAULINE JELINEK The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — Struggling to find enough doctors, nurses and linguists for the war effort, the Pentagon will temporarily recruit foreigners who have been living in the United States on student and work visas, or with refugee or political asylum status.
    Defense Secretary Robert Gates has authorized the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to recruit certain legal residents whose critical medical and language skills are “vital to the national interest,” officials said, using for the first time a law passed three years ago.
    Though the military previously has taken recruits with green cards seeking permanent residency, Gates’ action enables the services to start a one-year pilot program to find up to 1,000 foreigners who have lived in the states legally for at least two years on certain types of temporary visas.
    The new recruits into the armed forces would get accelerated treatment in the process toward becoming U.S. citizens in return for serving in the wartime military in the United States or abroad.
    “The services are doing a tremendous job of recruiting quality personnel to meet our various missions,” sometimes with bonus pay and tuition for medical school, said Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy.
    But they haven’t been able to fill their need for 24,000 doctors, dentists and nurses in the Defense Department.
    The Pentagon’s doctor and nurse corps remain 1,000 short of the numbers needed to treat patients, and Carr said he hoped the program would fill the gaps.
    The military’s most pressing need is for neurosurgeons and dermatologists to treat troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with brain and burn injuries caused by insurgents’ wide use of roadside bombs and suicide bombs.
    The force also lacks nurses with.................................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00204