The Pentagon made a surprise announcement on Thursday to let undocumented immigrants serve in the United States military.

The Department of Defense is letting undocumented immigrants apply for military service under the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI) program, which recruits skilled foreigners, if they qualify as so-called "Dreamers": young people who entered the US illegally as children who have lived in the country for most of their lives, graduated from high school or earned a GED, and kept a clean legal record.

The Dreamers will only make the cut, however, if they successfully fill out a 127-page form that asks whether they have been terrorists, hold advanced degrees, and can speak Cebuano, Igbo, Yoruba, and a host of other rare languages. What's more, they'll be competing for only 1,500 open slots against thousands of legal immigrants with non-permanent visas who have already applied under the same criteria.