Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

While there are a number of Americans in today’s society who believe that immigrants are unpatriotic and parasitic on the American economy, many would argue that immigrants have made continuous contributions to the United States in many ways, one of which is through becoming a part of the U.S. armed forces.  The purpose of this quantitative descriptive study was to analyze trends in immigration status among military service members in the United States between 2009 and 2014.  Utilizing Excel, the researcher conducted a t-test, multiple regression analysis, and collective descriptive statistics on the variables in order to test the hypotheses that there is a difference in enlistment rates between citizens and immigrants and that there is a relationship between enlistment rate and immigration status.  It was found that there is a significant relationship between immigration status and military enlistment 

Keywords: U.S. Armed Forces, Immigration, Naturalization, Noncitizen