US army enlistment

T

tommy_gunn

Active member
I am a south African
i would love to join the US army. They say i can join, but when i do speak to the embassy they say i need a green card, when i spoke to a recruiter he said that i need a green card. Delemma embassy dont want to help with green card if i do not have work, army cant help cause i dont have a green card.
so what should i do
 
Welcome to the Immigration Maze of the US. I'd say eithier A. Find a company that will hire you in CONUS (NOT EASILY DONE) B. apply for a student visa and study nursing. Graduate and apply for LPR.
 
What are you good at?
Find a job in that field stateside that will sponsor you.
If you are ellegible for the greencard lottery you might want to apply for that as well.

Just throwing some ideas out there.
Otherwise talk to 13.th redneck, he´s the house SME on the subject.
 
I believe South Africans are eligible for the Green Card lottery. Give that a go, but don't do that while neglecting the more conventional paths.
If you have more than a High School education, are South African and have a job, you are eligible for the lottery.
If you can, while in South Africa, try to get a translation license or certificate. It won't get you in but when the time comes it can be very useful. Yesterday I became a certified Korean - English translator (passed the test, even though I was the only guy who didn't use an electronic dictionary).

The two realistic routes:
1) Find work. This is going to be very tricky.
Let's say you found an employer who really wants to hire you. Both you and the company, through an immigration lawyer, have to provide quite substantial paperwork by March. Here the paperwork is sent into a lottery and is also reviewed and eventually only 20% of all applicants will actually get their H1B work visas. That's 20% of all people who have an employer who really wants them. In other words, even if everything goes right, you have an 80% chance of not making it.
If you do pass the lottery and review, your H1B will be effective starting October 1st of that year. You have to be employed continuously for 5 years on average before you are eligible for applying for a Green Card (Legal Perminant Residence).
If at any point you lose your employment (downsizing, get fired etc.) depending on your citizenship, you may have no grace period where you can find other work. But even if you do have a grace period, the odds of you being able to land another employer who's willing to go through all the paperwork to hire you is very small and odds are it will not happen within the 1 or 2 months the government gives you.
Once you enter the Green Card application phase, your status changes. If you're LPR pending, deporting you becomes a little bit of a challenge for the US government. It takes a few months to go through.

2) Teaching and Nursing.
You apply for school in a US university and get a degree in teaching or nursing which both are occupations in extremely high demand. Nurses don't get an H1B, but an H1C which is a work visa for nurses. Needless to say your employer has to sponsor you and US colleges are also pretty expensive.
When you get your teaching or nursing degree, make sure you find an employer who is willing to sponsor you for your LPR. The road should to an LPR should be shorter after this point but considering the time it takes to get the degree, it can actually be longer than 5 years (if you have no previous college credit that is transferrable to a US college).
 
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Freind,am having the same problem like yours,i live in GHANA and is all my dream to join the US army,i have entered for the green card hoping to receive my notification letter by GOD grace,if you entered the 2010 lottery last yaer all what you need to do is to pray very hard to GOD,because he can do all thing .pray my friend if only you need the US army like me.bear in mind that ,real soldiers don't die they multiply.see you soon in the army because i believe am already there by Gods grace.Amen
 
Hey all,

I can't believe its such a long process after reading the_13th_rednecks post.. It almost sounds like there is slim to none chance at getting one. Im currently in the Australian Army and looking at moving to the US to gain my Green card so I can enlist aswell.. but if I have to have a five year army break to work as a civi just to gain my Green card to enlist... well thats just a real downer!!
Is there nothing else I can look at to shorten the process??
 
Like I said, you can try nursing. If you already have a college degree and have transferrable credits, your time in becoming a nurse may be shortened considerably.
I'm sorry but after years of research, these are pretty much the only ways in getting in.
 
Thanks for the reply, no college degree here :D

Looks like I would have to go the old fashion way of getting one.. I just dont think I would have the patience to last the five years.
 
Well that's your thing then.
It's not just the patience, the odds of you getting hired and being able to maintain your H1B status for five years in itself is extremely iffy. Obviously, if you lose your job for whatever reason and are forced to leave the US, you have to start all over again.
 
Perhaps join your country's army (they say you need a job), get some experience, then go to the US Army.
 
Actually not so Matteo.
By joining your own military you could lose precious years you'd need to make it to the US. Yeah, it's that hard.
 
Agreed 13th. One of the guys I was at RMC with wanted to join the USAF or the USN as soon as he could. Neither would accept him because he had served in a Foreign service. But this was the same guy who said the Army would accept him as an Aviation Warrant Officer, so I take anything he said with a grain of salt.

Either way, serving in your own forces does set back any hopes of joining the US Services.
 
No, serving in a foreign, friendly military does not rule you out for service in the US military once you are able to get a Legal Permanent Residency. It would bar you from being an officer or a warrant officer and you will have to become naturalized before you can rise to certain enlisted ranks, usually E-5 and above.
Your friend was lying on all counts. You have to be a US citizen in order to become a helicopter pilot because you'd have to be a Warrant Officer and you have to be able to get a higher level security clearance (which usually means citizenship though in rare cases it is also issued to people with LPRs).
Again, if you serve in a friendly military your chances are not hampered legally. The only issue would be the time lost by serving in it.
 
I rarely believed him on anything he said anyway, and it would be a far stretch to call him a 'friend'.

But that makes sense.
 
Woops let me rephrase what I said.
Serving in a foreign military doesn't bar you from being an officer. What I meant was that once you get an LPR, you'll be eligible to join but not as an officer.
 
Do you think there might be a repeat in that bill the Bush admin tried to pass a few years back about making it easier for allied nations personal to join your ranks? Not sure what happened to the bill, just remember reading about it.
 
There is no way to tell but the signs are not good.
The poor economy has encouraged people to enlist.
As the operations in Iraq wind down, more people volunteer.
So it actually may not come back.
 
Yea good point, no need to look overseas for people to fill a quota when you can get it at home.
 
Serving the SANDF

to serve the SANDF "south African defense force" is not that great from being 1 in the top 5 to down like 80 on the list. Plus if you are white you can never get a rank higher than a lt. The SANDF has become a racesist black military force and you will die in training by your fellow comrades, thats why i would like to join the us army
 
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