The Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest Program
Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest, also known as MAVNI, is a U.S. military recruiting program that permits legal non-citizens with high valued skills to join the U.S. Army in exchange for an expedited path to U.S. citizenship. A non-citizen who joins the U.S. Army through MAVNI is able to move from a non-immigrant visa or asylee, refugee, TPS status directly to U.S. citizenship. Simply put, the non-citizen will bypass the Green Card process entirely and immediately gain U.S. citizenship. In most cases participants in the MAVNI program will become naturalized by the time they graduate from the ten week Basic Combat Training or accept a commission as Army Officers.
The U.S. Army frequently posts the types of skills it is seeking. Currently the U.S. Army is seeking non-citizens with specific foreign language skills and those in the health care profession. The sought after languages include Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cebuana, Cambodian-Khmer, Chinese, Czech, French (with citizenship from an African country), Georgian, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Indonesian, Kashmiri, Korean, Kurdish, Lao, Malay, Malayalam, Moro (Tausug/Maranao/Maguindanao), Nepalese, Pashto, Persian Dari, Persian Farsi, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Sindhi, Serbo-Croatian, Singhalese, Somali, Swahili, Tagalog, Tajik, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu (with citizenship from Pakistan or Afghanistan), Uzbek, and Yoruba. Additionally, the U.S. Army is requesting skills in the medical and health care professions ranging from dental to emergency medical specialties.
The general requirements for the MAVNI program include:
- Applicants must be in one of the following categories at the time of their enlistment:
- Non-immigrant categories E, F, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, TC, TD, TN, U or V
- Asylee, refugee, or Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
- Applicants must legally reside in the U.S. for a minimum of 2 years prior to joining the Army (excluding DACA Applicants) without a single absence from the country lasting longer than 90 days
- Applicants must have a high school diploma and a qualifying score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AQFT)
Recently, Beach-Oswald was successful in assisting a client with acceptance into the MAVNI program and he is on his way to quickly becoming a U.S. citizen. Please contact our office if you are interested in obtaining more information about the MAVNI program or are interested in pursuing this route to citizenship!