G'day chaps,

Just thought I'd have an ask around to see if anyone here might be able to shed a little light on my situation.

I'm a qualified medic in the New Zealand Army. I've served for the last 2 1/2 years though unfortunately haven't been on any deployments yet (In the NZ Defence Force there's very limited spots to go overseas - you have to wait your turn before you can head over).

At this point in time I'm looking at a couple of options not available over here. Mainly either joining the Canadian Forces and becoming a SARTech or the US Airforce and go with the Pararescue Jumpers. I have a passionate interest in emergency medicine and both of these careers would be fantastic.

From the US Army website: "You cannot join the U.S. Army unless you are a U.S. citizen, U.S. National, or have a green card. You can only get a green card if you live in the United States for 5 years or marry a U.S. citizen. In order to move to the United States you have to get a resident card. You can obtain a resident card by first getting a job in the U.S."

Presumably this applies to the Airforce as well. Can anyone shed any light on this? As an aside - does anyone disagree with foreigners joining up?

Cheers,

-Alex

Actually, the US military is looking for medical personnel. And there is a way to join without being having the US Resident card. You do, however, have to be in the US (legally) to join (i.e. Work Visa).

Here's an article about that--


http://www.boston.com/news/nat..._call_to_us_service/

Cheers for that, I had a read of the article and it shed some light on a few things.

Unfortunately I'm not sure where my qualifications would stand me as they're not civilian recognised. Would probably only count as having 'good experience' or similar.

One of the guys in the article said "Army recruit offices that I have contacted have no directives or information."

That's been a similar experience for myself, I got in touch with an Airforce recruiter and was given the standard answer of "You need to be a citizen or have a green card".

You're right on that. The article seems to hint that this is a "localized" deal as well, though it doesn't specify. It does mention that linguists were being sought "but only in the DC area". So, I'm betting only certain recruiters were let in on this deal.

I know that the USAF website has live chat and contact forms for recruiters. If you haven't already tried that, that would be another way to find more information.

www.airforce.com

As far as joining the military I know that the US Army will take forgien nationals (mainly for infantry and some other jobs that are way below the numbers they need).

But as far as joining the Paras there is a couple very large problems.

1. The air force is very very picky about taking people (they are the smallist of the armied forces in the US, so they can be picky.)

2. The Paras while they fall under the Air Force as far as it is there parent branch, they are under SOCOM (special operations command) which is joint service command. Every single job that you can do in SOCOM (Army SF, Marines Force Recon, Air Force TAC-P, Air Force Pararescue, ect...) requires a Top Secret security clearance and that is something that rarely if ever does the united states department of defence give out for forgian nationals.

Sorry but I have to tell ya that the odds are against you.