Faith leaders in the United States hope that a recent in the US Senate and the house in the house may finally bring a solution to an immigration question that has hindered their service for its communities for more than two years.
In March 2023, the Biden administration suddenly presented a way in which the government processes green cards in the category, which includes abused minors and religious workers. It created up-to-date residues that threaten the ability of thousands of pastors, nuns, imams, cantors and others to stay in the United States.
The legislation only deals with a compact part of the problem in which the legislature increases the probability that immigration remains one of the most polarizing problems in the country.
Faith leaders say that even a close solution will be sufficient to prevent harmful losses for communities and to plan the future again.
“If the current practice does not change, our community is slowly strangled,” said Rev. Aaron Wessman, Vicar General and Director of Formation for the Glenmary Home Missioners, a compact Catholic order that serves in rural America.
“I will cry for joy when this legislation flies,” he said. “It means the world for our members who live in the middle of uncertainty and for the people they can help.”
Two thirds of the priests and brothers of Glenmary under the age of 50 are born abroad from Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria and Uganda and they are affected by the current immigration slot, added Wessman.
Thousands of others that serve the diversity of the faiths in the United States, from Islam to Hinduism to Evangelical Christianity, are both pastoral care and social services.
There are no precise numbers, but it is estimated that there are thousands of religious workers who are now covered in the Green Card system and/or have not yet been able to apply.
How clergy get green cards – and why border crossings created residues
Congregations bring the religious workers of the United States to momentary visas, which are called R-1, which enable them to work for up to five years. In the past, it was enough time for the communities to apply for Green Cards under a special category EB-4 that would enable the clergyman to become constant residents.
The congress places a quota of green cards that are divided into categories each year, almost all in the types of employment or family relationships for US citizens. In most categories, demand exceeds the annual quota.
Citizens of countries with particularly high demand are used in separate, often longer “lines”. The category of the married Mexican children of US citizens, in which more than 24 years ago, only processed applications existed the most than 24 years ago.
Also in a separate line were migrant children with “special youth status in immigrants” – neglected or abused minors – from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Hundreds of thousands were looking for humanitarian green cards or an asylum after they have been shot illegally to the USA since the mid-2010s, although the Trump government recently carried out the program.
In March 2023, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suddenly started the minors with the clergyman of General Green card. This has created such a bottleneck that these green cards were not available in April, only halfway in the current financial year.
And if you are available in the up-to-date financial year from October, you should be stuck in the six -year deficit that you were faced with at the beginning of this year. This means that religious workers will not receive their green cards with a pending application before their five -year visa fails and they have to leave the country.
In a report published on Thursday, the US citizenship and immigration services were responsible for the EB-4 residues for the application for applications from minors from Central America and said that the agency had determined a widespread fraud in this program.
A “close solution” so that the clergy born abroad can stay in the United States
The Legislation of the Senate and the House of Representatives would enable the Ministry of Homeland Security to extend religious workers as long as the application for Green Card is pending. They would also prevent compact jobs – e.g. B. from Associat to Senior Pastor or to be assigned to another community in the same diocese to make the outstanding application invalid.
“Even if the immigration issues are controversial and sometimes they no longer do partisan policy, we believe that this solution is tight enough and the stakeholder group we have is important that we hope that we can do this,” said Democratic Senator Tim Kaine von Virginia, who presented the Senate in April about the problem in his Richmond Parish.
Two of the last three priests were born abroad, and at the beginning of this month he was approached by a sister with the Comboni missionaries who were worried about their leaking visa. Kaine’s two Republican Cosponsors, Sensan Susan Collins from Maine and Jim Risch from Idaho, heard of the voters who are worried about losing many faith leaders.
“It contributes to your quality of life. And there is no reason why you shouldn’t have the ability to have this,” said Risch. “Religious beliefs spread far beyond the borders, and it is helpful to have these people who come here … and want to link to the Americans of the same faith. Everything we can do to make it easier is what we want to do.”
The Republican MP Mike Carey from Ohio introduced an identical legislation in the house with Republican and Democratic colleagues. Both legislation are still in the respective judicial committees.
“To be honest, I don’t know which objections could have people,” said Lance Conclin, adding that the invoice no longer needs green cards, just a time extension for existing visas. Conclin-Co chairman of the religious group of the American Immigration Lawyers Association often represents Evangelical Pastors.
The need for religious workers born abroad is acute, say faith leaders
Belief recognitions from Buddhism to Judaism to recruit the clergy born abroad, which can serve the growing non -English -speaking communities, and were often trained at foreign institutions that have been permeated in the history of religion. For many, it is also a necessity due to a lack of spiritual deficiency.
The number of Catholic priests in the United States has decreased by more than 40% since 1970, according to the Center for Applied Research in Apostolate, a research center connected to Georgetown University. However, some dioceses experience an enhance in professions, and others expect more to be inspired by the recent choice of Leo XIV, the first Pope born in the USA.
Last summer, the Diocese of Paterson, who serves 400,000 Catholics and 107 municipalities in three counties in New Jersey – and five of his affected priests sued the Ministry of the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Homeland Security as well as the US citizenship and immigration services.
The lawsuit argues that the change in 2023 ““ Life and Religious Freedoms of the Priests and the faithful they serve will cause stern and significant disorders. The government’s first answer was that the Foreign Ministry rightly made this change.
The parties expected some measures in the legislative and agreed to remain the lawsuit, said Raymond Lahoud, the lawyer of the diocese.
However, since the legislative templates were not included in the almost 900-page legislation that the congress passed and President Donald Trump was signed in the law in the early this month, the lawsuit is progressing, said Lahoud.
“We just can’t wait,” he said.
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