Distressing but not too surprising. Up here we have a large Hmong population and assorted other immigrants from places where laws and government work a whole lot differently than they work in a developed nation (when they work at all -- we've got a lot of Dinka refugees from south Sudan, as well). There's a lot of cons and frauds targeting those people because they don't have the same spider sense to pick up on scams the way people who grew up in the US cultural framework do -- and an unfortunate portion of those crimes are backed up with threats of legal action against the victims, having them arrested, whatever, for not participating in the scam.
And they fall for it a lot -- if you grow up somewhere where a rich guy can have a poor guy arrested by slipping the police some cash or calling in a favor from his cousin the chief of police, you carry that framework somewhere in your head even if that's not local rules. So I can easily see this guy claiming that for a modest kick back he can hook up immigrants with membership in a non-deployable reserve military unit that will help get them citizenship. Most of his members are probably from nations where similar kick backs would get you out of conscription or get you promoted if conscripted, so in the victims' heads the script works.
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