Did You Know: The US Government Is Offering An Expedited Path For Citizenship
Author: Citizenship Lawyer Alena Shautsova
For those who possess required language or critical skills and are willing to enlist with the US military.
Those holding critical skills – physicians, nurses, and certain experts in language with associated cultural backgrounds – would be eligible. To determine its value in enhancing military readiness, the limited pilot program will recruit up to 1,500 people per year, and will continue through May 15, 2014.
Eligibility:
- The applicant must be in one of the following categories at time of enlistment
-
- asylee, refugee, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), or
- nonimmigrant categories E, F, H, I, J, K, L, M, O, P, Q, R, S, T, TC, TD, TN, U, or V
- The applicant must have been in valid status in one of those categories for at least two years immediately prior to the enlistment date, but it does not have to be the same category as the one held on the date of enlistment; and
- An applicant who may be eligible on the basis of a nonimmigrant category at time of enlistment (see 1b above) must not have had any single absence from the United States of more than 90 days during the two year period immediately preceding the date of enlistment.
- An applicant who is eligible under 1-3 above is not rendered ineligible by virtue of having a pending application for adjustment of status to lawful permanent residence. In the specific case of an alien with H nonimmigrant status at the time of filing a pending application for adjustment of status who has lost such status while his or her application for adjustment was pending, and who is otherwise eligible for enlistment under the MAVNI program, the military Service may on a case-by-case basis waive the requirement that the alien be in a status described in 1 above at the time of enlistment
Health Care Professionals
- Applicants must meet all qualification criteria required for their medical specialty, and the criteria for foreign-trained DoD medical personnel recruited under other authorities
- Applicants must demonstrate proficiency in English
- Applicants must commit to at least 3 years of active duty, or six years in the Selected Reserve
- Applicants must possess specific language and culture capabilities in a language critical to DoD
Enlisted Individuals with Special Language and Culture Backgrounds
- Applicants must demonstrate a language proficiency
- Applicants must meet all existing enlistment eligibility criteria
- Applicants must enlist for at least 4 years of active duty
Languages of Interests:
- Albanian
- Amharic
- Arabic
- Azerbaijani
- Bengali
- Burmese
- Cambodian-Khmer
- Cebuano
- Chinese
- Czech
- French (limited to individuals possessing citizenship from an African country)
- Haitian-Creole
- Hausa
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Igbo
- Indonesian
- Korean
- Kurdish
- Lao
- Malay
- Malayalam
- Moro
- Nepalese
- Persian [Dari & Farsi]
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Punjabi
- Pushtu (aka Pashto)
- Russian
- Serbo-Croatian
- Sindhi
- Sinhalese
- Somali
- Swahili
- Tagalog
- Tajik
- Tamil
- Thai
- Turkish
- Turkmen
- Urdu
- Uzbek
- Yoruba