Why was the M.A.V.N.I program suspended till date?

SPC (Join to see) it wasn't poor management, it's legitimately difficult to conduct background checks on people who have grown up in a hostile country like China, especially within the one year limit of the DEP.

When MAVNIs accessed into the Army they were stabilized and couldn't move until their background investigation was complete. For some that was five years. The Army couldn't use them and move them as needed. So they decided to not ship DEPs to Basic without background check, but since it took so long, they fell out of the DEP after a year. So, the Army stopped making special exceptions for these recruits and ended the MAVNI program. Plus, the idea was that we would use these foreign language speakers in the Army but without a clearance they all became Combat Arms and Truck Drivers.

Plus, a ridiculously high percentage of them were Chinese spies. So, there is that. When I say a lot, the Counter Intelligence Office in Okinawa told me that half his investigations were of MAVNI Soldiers. It was a security risk and the Chinese did an excellent job of taking advantage of it.

SFC (Join to see) this is absolutely true. Speaking as CI. That and the MAVNI program wantndesigne to “recruit the best.” It wa thr language capability we were after and when that wasn’t something we could sustain, it went away. We are STILL digging out of the MAVNI mess. Far too undermanned to deal with the new CO threat while mopping up the MAVNI mess.

SFC (Join to see) I heard that rumor but to date, there have been zero criminal prosecutions of any MAVNI “spies.” There was one guy, Chaoqun Ji, who was prosecuted by the FBI for “failure to register as a foreign agent.” He was being paid by Chinese intelligence to buy U.S. consumer reports on several defense workers. The FBI caught him and arrested him (before the Army finished his background check). That was the only MAVNI “spy” case. There were s lot of rumors about alleged spies but the rumors turned out to be just that. The US has found many more spies among other recruiting streams. Part of the problem seems to be that some folks confuse “MAVNI” with “green card” or “foreign born” and they aren’t the same thing.

All MAVNIs were always required to complete the normal enlistment background checks before enlisting. However, in 2016, DOD came up with new background checks that were specific to MAVNIs and applied them retroactively to all MAVNIs. DOD still hasn’t finished these checks on all the MAVNIs who enlisted in 2016, prior to the “shutdown”—which happened under President Obama. The change in the enlistment law happened under President Trump. So President Obama’s DOD strangled the program and President Trump’s DOD killed it. There are no signs that DOD wants to resuscitate the program. RAND did a full study of the program and found that MAVNI was cost-effective, provided high quality recruits, and was not a national security threat. DOD suppressed the report. A copy was released in litigation.