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Comment by frozenlettuce | Hacker News Reader

Recruinting in general is getting harder https://www.npr.org/2023/01/18/1149855912/the-navy-has-raise... My guess is that in a few years there will be a foreign legion in the French model (serve some years, gain citizenship)

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20+ years of non-stop war will do that. Every 18 year old thinking about service has known nothing but war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a handful of other place, most of which were abandoned and not won. For those with parents who serve, they saw extended and repeated wartime deployments.

Contrast that with my generation (late GenX). The single "big" war growing up was the first Iraq War. It was relatively popular and we "won" the war... the follow-on was no-fly enforcement, but minimal boots on the ground. And we grew up with parents deployed on a regular schedule to Germany or Korea, usually relatively comfortable places.

Isn’t there already some sort of path to citizenship via military service? I suppose that you’d probably have to at least be a resident though.

Yes there is:

https://www.uscis.gov/military/naturalization-through-milita...

It's not exactly a foreign legion style thing but you can become a citizen via military service.

Not sure what your exactly looking for this to be, but you can already become eligible for citizenship via military service.

https://www.uscis.gov/military/naturalization-through-milita...

Can you do that from another country? Or do you have to be a resident first?

I'm guessing private mercenary/security companies will become more common in the future, e.g. Blackwater

There is already a path to citizenship by serving in the US Military.

there is, but you need to be a resident already (what I mean is the program being opened to people around the globe)

Rome also utilized mercenaries during its downfall

Foreign legion is not the same.

Arguably the Roman army always had foreigners, and it failed when it stopped trying to assimilate them and just treated them as mercenaries.

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