In shortAccording to Yevgeny Lutsky, joining the US military as an immigrant starts with a recruiter and the ASVAB; without a green card, the Army won’t take you. In the National Guard you serve one weekend a month, and for three days of drill he was paid about $580. Military citizenship used to come after a year of service, then right at Basic Training in 10 weeks, but he says that fast track has now been put on hold. The benefits are real — college for your kids, health insurance, a VA loan with no down payment — but you earn them with years of service.
New York, 2017, the Coney Island subway station. Yevgeny Lutsky has just landed in America on a green card he won in the lottery: his wife is eight months pregnant, his older daughter is three, and he has no home and no job. He steps out of the subway, and a man in a US military uniform suddenly turns to him, holds out a business card and says, in Russian: “Here. You need this.”
Nothing came of it back then. Three years later, though, Yevgeny did put on the uniform, and today he’s in his sixth year in the US National Guard. I invited him onto Without Borders because there’s plenty of talk about immigrants in the military, and very little of it is honest. We started with the most uncomfortable question.
Do immigrants join the US military just for the benefits?
People from back home came after Yevgeny on TikTok: shameful, “all these newcomers,” they only sign up for the benefits. He answers calmly. His first contract with the Army National Guard was for three years, the shortest available, and it came with no bonuses at all. He enlisted in 2020, when things in Philadelphia were tense, because he wanted to learn how to shoot and to know what to do if real trouble ever came. As for citizenship, he was about to qualify anyway, based on how long he’d lived in the US.
The episode is in Russian; on YouTube you can turn on auto-translated English subtitles.
He doesn’t pretend the benefits mean nothing, either.
I still think it’s a good springboard for an immigrant.Watch this moment · 6:22
The springboard is the support, the English and the different way people treat you. Yevgeny told me a story that stuck with me more than any number. After a drill, still in uniform, he stopped at a store in a small town a couple of hours outside Philadelphia. A bearded stranger walked up, said “thank you for your service” and started loading his bags into the trunk.
And that’s when you realize you’re not just some newcomer anymore.Watch this moment · 7:41
I’m an immigrant myself, and I know how much that feeling is worth: you’re no longer a guest here.
Shot by ProStudio1For the record, since people ask all the time: there’s no mandatory military service in the US, and no conscription either. It’s an all-volunteer force; men ages 18 to 25 simply register with the Selective Service System. Yevgeny volunteered.
How the National Guard works — and how it differs from the Reserve
Yevgeny found out about the National Guard from an Instagram ad: “Live here? Serve here.” He had already tried in New York and in Florida, and both attempts drowned in red tape: first they wanted a note from “your own doctor,” which a new arrival doesn’t have, then his paperwork got lost.
He puts the difference simply. In both the Guard and the Reserve you serve one weekend a month, sometimes starting Friday, plus about two weeks of training in the summer. But the National Guard is funded by the state and answers to the state, while the Reserve is federal, and its commander is the president. Serve in Pennsylvania, and you answer to Pennsylvania.
The ASVAB: how to pass it and why a high score matters
It all starts with a recruiter. Yevgeny recommends filling out the form on goarmy.com or airforce.com, and to followers who ask “where do I find a recruiter?” he says, without ceremony: open Google Maps and type in Army Recruiter.
The big exam is the ASVAB. Yevgeny didn’t study for it in any serious way: he downloaded an app and “tapped on it instead of Instagram.” He took it twice: soon after arriving, scoring 55, and again before joining the Guard, scoring 85. If you’re preparing now, people who already serve recommend ASVAB Prep: ASVAB questions with explanations in English, Russian and Spanish.
The more points you get, the more bonuses are open to you, because more different jobs are open to you.Watch this moment · 9:41
A low score leaves you with only the most basic jobs. So his advice is to get your English at least to the point where you understand your sergeants, and to brush up on your high school math. He learned English himself from YouTube during his hour-long commute. I couldn’t resist teasing him: it’s easy to say “just do well on the ASVAB” when you speak four languages.
The medical exam takes place at MEPS, which is also where you take the ASVAB. There’s no fitness test to get in, he says: until they ship out to Basic, recruits attend drills under a recruit training program.
What Basic Training is really like
Mentally, Yevgeny says, it was harder than physically. He was 34, with a wife and two kids, surrounded by eighteen-year-olds. During a middle-of-the-night wake-up, a 24-year-old sergeant explained to everyone that they hadn’t accomplished a thing in life, and Yevgeny stood there thinking about his honors degree, his four languages and his own digital agency. His takeaway: it’s a mind game. Get through the day, go to sleep, start the next one.
There’s no hazing, according to him. There was COVID, though, so recruits weren’t taken to the dining hall, and Yevgeny, a vegetarian at the time, went hungry, lying awake at night dreaming about the burger he’d eat after graduation. In the end, he started eating fish.
Shot by ProStudio1National Guard pay: what a junior soldier earns, and why his taxes came to 10%
Yevgeny named his pay for three days of drill outright: about $580. At the time he was an E-4 with five years of service. On active duty, his base pay is now about $3,500 a month.
The point is, you can’t compare a service member’s taxes with a civilian’s taxes.Watch this moment · 31:04
Here’s why. On Active Duty, you get allowances for housing (BAH) and food (BAS) on top of base pay, and they aren’t taxed. That’s almost half of your income, and the amount depends on the city: Yevgeny gets about $2,400 for housing in Philadelphia, while a friend of his with the same base pay in Aventura gets about $3,900. So his W-2 showed about $19,000 for the year, his tax rate came out to 10%, and commenters promptly called him a liar.
Shot by ProStudio1Military benefits: health insurance, college for your kids and the VA loan
From day one of Active Duty, your insurance covers the whole family. Civilian doctors can be a hassle, though: not everyone takes TRICARE Prime, the military plan. These days Yevgeny pays about $350 a month for TRICARE Reserve Select for his family, plus dental.
What impressed him most was education. Pennsylvania has a program for the National Guard: for your first 6 years of service, the state pays for your college, and if you re-sign for another 6 years, you can transfer that benefit to your spouse or your kids.
You can transfer the college benefit to either your wife or your kids.Watch this moment · 38:23
Yevgeny re-signed and can now split four years of college between his two daughters. These aren’t elite universities, they’re state schools, but in America that’s serious money.
A VA loan is a military home loan with special terms: no down payment, no PMI (private mortgage insurance) and usually a lower interest rate. In the National Guard, he says, you become eligible after 6 years of service. He bought his first home without a VA loan at all, through a Philadelphia pilot program: the city covered 5% of the down payment and 5% of the closing costs, and he paid about $2,000 himself. “That’s only because he’s military,” people wrote in the comments. No, Yevgeny replies, he didn’t have a VA loan yet.
Military citizenship: what has changed
When Yevgeny signed his contract, you could get citizenship after a year of service, with no filing fee. His interview took two minutes: the officer asked his military job, heard a code he recognized, and that was that. Later, he says, guys were getting citizenship right at Basic Training, within 10 weeks, and plenty of them enlisted for exactly that reason.
They’re tightening the screws on everything now; it’s gotten a lot harder.Watch this moment · 52:36
Now, Yevgeny says, expedited citizenship through service has been put on hold, and jobs that require citizenship are off the table if all you have is a green card. If you’re counting on military citizenship, check the current rules on uscis.gov and with a recruiter: they change.
Shot by ProStudio1Pension and jobs after the military
Here Yevgeny is honest to the point of discomfort. In the National Guard, the military pension starts at the regular retirement age, around 67, and the extra money will be small. A real pension goes to those who put in 20 years of Active Duty and got a disability rating.
Jobs are a different story. Some military specialties carry straight over into civilian life: in the Army, for example, you can train as a construction foreman, from foundation to roof, with all the certifications. After you get out, a transition program helps, and big companies, according to Yevgeny, will at least call a veteran in for an interview. That doesn’t guarantee a job, but in America, where résumés often go unread, it’s a lot.
Should an immigrant join the US military?
Yevgeny won’t give a clear-cut answer. People who join only for the bonuses have a hard time at Basic and leave after their first contract. People who genuinely love it stay. He’s one of the latter: nine years in America, a house he bought, kids growing up here.
So this is the country — this is my home.Watch this moment · 54:26
He considers his current contract his last: he’s 38 and will be done at 45. And since our conversation, I keep thinking about that business card at Coney Island. Sometimes “you need this” takes a while to land — but it does land.
Shot by ProStudio1Terms of service, benefits and citizenship rules change — check them with a recruiter and on official websites.
Kristina Samofal
Photo & Video Production