He was an established actor in Hungary - and though actors were exempt from military service, Bela left the theater and volunteered for service when patriotism called. He was promoted to Captain in the Ski Patrol during WWI, was wounded on the Russian front, and received the equivalent of the Purple Heart. The end of the war was followed by the Hungarian revolution in 1919. Bela, who had taken an active role on behalf of the actors union, found himself on the wrong side of the ruling party and was forced to flee the country. He went to Vienna and then on to Germany where he continued his acting career. Still pursued, Bela found safe passage to the United States aboard a merchant ship as a crewman. He landed in New Orleans and ventured to New York where he later went through Ellis Island and became a naturalized U. S. citizen. http://www.lugosi.com/biography.html
Bela Lugosi was an illegal alien, but the Hungarian community in New York arranged for his sponsorship. Of course he was also a political refugee, despite being an injured WWI hero (he was on the ski patrol in the Carpathian Mountains for the Austro-Hungarian side), but he was on Mihael Horthy's death list, along with other Hungarian artists, because they supported his predecessor Bela Kuhn. If Bela Lugosi returned to his home town in Transylvania, he would've been shot on sight. An interesting quirk of history is Lugosi received his injuries that got him out of the war 5 miles from Voivode Vladislaus Dracula's un-redisovered castle Poenari. It wouldn't be rediscovered until about 1972.
