Providing Aid and Immigration reform

Reading these two stories, first on the building immigration reform impetus, then on the recovery of the last missing SEAL in Afghanistan, it occurred to me that the Afghanis who rescued the only surviving member of the four-person team should be given the opportunity, should they desire it, to immigrate to the U.S. It could become standard procedure to offer legal residency to any foreign national who provides substantial aid to US military personnel. By limiting the benefit to military personnel, perhaps even to only those in a combat zone, the policy can avoid the abuse that would occur if it included all US citizens.

At any rate, it would definitely alleviate the fears of those who wish to help but fear retribution from the local opposition. It would also create a powerful incentive to do the right thing.

Naturally, there will be concerns that certain desperate individuals might engineer a 'situation' so they could come to the aid of the soldiers involved, but this kind of risk exists in other areas (people who want to be seen as heroes, so they start fires they can put out, etc.) but it doesn't arise too often, and at any rate, the standard investigation following every incident would quickly reveal those attempted frauds and thereby serve as a counter incentive, as long as some negative consequence followed (local prosecution? I don't trust that in many of these corruption-laden areas. This needs some further thought, since if there is no negative consequence, there's no risk, and anyone with the means to engineer a fake accident would see a very real motivation to do so. Then again, those with the means to do so are usually in a pretty good position in their home country and rarely want to immigrate, so it may be a smaller problem than I initially thought).

There could also be concerns that terrorists or insurgents would come to the rescue for the strategic bonus of gaining legal entry to the United States, trading off their perceived immediate 'benefit' of harming a few servicemen for an eventual attack against a much greater number of civilians. Daunting as it seems, I would still prefer a system that gives us a record of their entry into the country to the alternative - they sneak into the country illegally and just hide out until they strike.

I don't think there would be much of a political barrier - the left seems to favor any kind of immigration on humanitarian grounds, and the right would favor rewarding people for good actions, especially on behalf of miliatary personnel.