Non-citizen recruits less likely to wash out

The armed forces have enlisted nearly 70,000 non-citizens since the attacks of 9/11 and, as a group, their washout rate is much lower than that of American citizens who enlist, according CNA, a think tank that studied attrition data gathered by the Defense Manpower Data Center.

Within three months of entering active service, 8.2 percent of citizen enlistees have been discharged. That is more than double the 4 percent attrition rate of non-citizens who volunteer to serve in America’s military.

At the three-year mark, 28 percent of citizens have left before completing initial service obligations while the washout rate for non-citizens remains significantly lower, at 16 percent. And the disparity widens by the four-year mark, with 32 percent of citizen recruits having been discharged versus only 18 percent of non-citizen accessions.

The results don’t change much when adjusted for age or other demographic differences between the two groups of volunteers, or even when comparisons are broken out by branch of service, CNA analysts found.

“These findings are consistent with the anecdotal evidence we gathered in our interviews of recruiters and non-citizen recruits,” wrote researchers Molly F. McIntosh and Seema Sayala. “The interviews revealed that, relative to citizen recruits, non-citizen recruits generally have a stronger attachment to serving the United States, which they now consider to be ‘their country,’ and [they] have a better work ethic.”

Given their lower attrition rate, which saves on recruiting and training costs, and the diversity of language and cultural skills that non-citizens have, CNA recommends that the services develop strategies to recruit more non-citizens, particularly as the U.S. economy improves, recruiting gets more difficult and demand stays high for foreign language skills.