Comment by jacobriis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacobriis | Hacker News Reader

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You can't join the military as a non-immigrant alien except for very narrow circumstances [1] for people who have had valid visa status for two years and have specific language skills [2] or medical qualifications. Requires 4 years of active duty for language candidates.

edit: Actually it looks like this program was suspended years ago and hasn't resumed.

[1] https://www.stilt.com/blog/2021/06/mavni-program/#Who_Is_Eli... [2] https://dod.defense.gov/news/mavni-fact-sheet.pdf

Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cambodian-Khmer, Cebuano, Chinese, Czech, Dhivehi (language of Maldives), French (limited to individuals possessing citizenship from an African country), Georgian, Haitian-Creole, Hausa, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Indonesian, Kashmiri, Korean, Kurdish, Lao, Malay, Malayalam, Moro, Nepalese, Pahari, Persian [Dari & Farsi], Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Pushtu (aka Pashto), Russian, Serbo, Croatian, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Somali, Swahili, Tagalog, Tajik, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek ,Yoruba

I'll admit that I'm not brushed-up, so I brushed up.

DoDI 1304.26[0] describes department-specific requirements, and points back to USC 10 for the legal requirements. USC10 S504(b) lays out the specific requirements, namely "... lawfully admitted for permanent residence[2] ..." and in-addition, as you point out, there exists program-exceptions performed or maintained by the SecDef. A report by the Deparment of Homeland Security suggests that some immigrant visas meet this criteria[3]. There's also a pretty long list of spouse-visas that constitute LPR[4].

So, it's still possible. A recruiter would know more, or at least know someone who knows more. Where there's a will, there's a way. Notice these are all primary sources, with a favor towards the authoritative information. If you're a stickler though, you could pull the PDFs direct from congress, but that's as much fun as reversing a box of punch cards.

[0] DoDI 1304.26 Encl. 3, 2(b) https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/do...

[1] USC10 504(b) https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/504

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840...

[3] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/2022_0405_pl...

[4] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/lawful-permanent-...

I'm not sure how posting a bunch of links that say you have to be a lawful permanent resident support your case that you don't have to be a lawful permanent resident. You think this guy just accidentally forgot he's a lawful permanent resident and got a H1B?

No there isn't a way for an H1B to join the military. Try the French Foreign Legion. Also Ukraine and Russia are hiring.

The links are simply a copy of a primary source for the correct legal stipulations, and are hence adjacent to a wholistic view.

You also seem to have confidently misread the situation, because OP does not indicate his specific current visa, since his spouse's visa may be that of a lawful permanent resident.

As those links state, to enlist in the military he would need to be a lawful permanent resident and in that case he wouldn't need to enlist in the military.

And if his wife were a permanent resident, he would also qualify to be a permanent resident and again not need to enlist in the military.

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