Article snippet: “When you step back and look at the stats … over 80 percent are granted,” Esper said. The Pentagon has come under fire for recent reports that suggest it is discharging immigrants from the program, known as Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest, or MAVNI. Since 2009, the program has enlisted more than 10,000 immigrants who either have critical language or medical skills. However, the program, created during the Bush administration, hit trouble when the Obama administration ordered the Pentagon program in 2014 to begin accepting beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. The MAVNI program was originally written to take in those who were legal immigrants, not undocumented immigrants. The program needed to be retooled and ground to halt. The founder of the program, retired Army Lt. Col. Margaret Stock, told Politico in 2014, “It’s a major bureaucratic screw-up by the Obama administration.” The Obama administration in September 2016 added additional security measures for recruits and halted the acceptance of any new applicants. Since then, the Pentagon has been working on reducing a backlog of thousands who were grandfathered into the program and awaiting their background checks. However, a slew of reports this year have suggested that recruits are being dropped from the program as part of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration stance. But Pentagon officials say rejections from the program have nothing to do with immi... Link to the full article to read more