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Comment by not_a_test_user | Hacker News Reader

You no longer can say that it's hard to emigrate to the USA: you just need to enlist, give up your freedom and possibly your morals! Grrreat deal.

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In 2012 1,031,631 people became permanent residents of the United States [1].

Obviously there are paths to citizenship. But some kinds of temporary visas don't offer a path to citizenship (like intercompany transfer L visas or F student visas) and this program could be useful to people on those visas if they'd like to stay.

[1] http://www.voanews.com/content/us-issues-million-green-cards...

And fluently speak the language of your homeland, which the US deems a high security risk and of particular need to have defense personnel with knowledge thereof...

Czech, Polish, Hungarian and Turkish are on the list: the languages of NATO allies

The languages of other many US allies are on the list as well.

So, this program is at least not entirely a Bay of Pigs style plot

Yeah, the list seems to include a lot of languages that seem more likely to be motivated by potential need for US military to be cooperating with forces speaking those languages than languages associated with threat populations.

If you come in as a MAVNI, you are probably not going to get to do a job using your home language, at least for a long time. It is not easy to get a security clearance as a Chinese or Russian immigrant. I met people who wanted to work as a linguist who spoke fluent English and another language. The guys I met ended up enlisting as mental health specialists and pharmacy assistants.

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