{"id":12235,"date":"2007-05-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/05\/05\/priests-nuns-missionaries-experiencing-visa-delays\/"},"modified":"2007-05-05T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-05T12:00:00","slug":"priests-nuns-missionaries-experiencing-visa-delays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/05\/05\/priests-nuns-missionaries-experiencing-visa-delays\/","title":{"rendered":"Priests, Nuns, Missionaries Experiencing Visa Delays"},"content":{"rendered":"

www.coxwashington.com<\/a><\/p>\n

By EUNICE MOSCOSO
Cox News Service
Wednesday, February 28, 2007<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON, D.C. February 28, 2007: (HPI note: This is an old story, but relates to a very current issue, the proposed rules changes that will impact Hindu institutions trying to bring priests, sthapatis, silpis and others to America. Hindu requests for the R-1 visa stopped being granted at this time, but we were unaware that it was a larger pattern. As part of this on-going story, HPI would like to hear from any organization in the US which has had difficulty getting an R-1 visa granted in the last two years. E-mail ar@hindu.org.)<\/p>\n

Religious groups and immigration lawyers are expressing alarm at the long delays that priests, nuns, missionaries, and other religious workers now encounter when applying for visas. The two categories of visas that make up about 90 percent of the religious work permits in the United States “seem to have come to a grinding halt,” said Crystal Williams, deputy director of programs at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Williams said that the delays are “across the board” and affect thousands of people waiting to work for a variety of religious groups, including Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, Evangelical churches, Mormons and Muslims.<\/p>\n

Dan Kane, a spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the delays are due to tightened security measures and a re-organization that funnels all religious worker visa applications through one regional service center in California. Most of the visas now require a site inspection of the sponsoring institution, he said. “The issue is more the integrity of the application process,” Kane added. By reducing fraud and assessing the legitimacy of the applicant, the process will become more efficient, he said.<\/p>\n

The Bush administration has been accused of being too lax with religious visas and giving them to Muslim clerics from other countries without enough vetting. Immigration officials said that the religious visa programs have seen a problem with fraud. An August 1995 report showed that the fraud rate for what is known as the special permanent religious visa was about 33 percent.<\/p>\n

Steve Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates tighter immigration measures, said that the visa program needed reform because of national security concerns about Islamic extremists trying to enter the United States. He said that a program rife with fraud will lose public support and disappear, which would be worse for applicants than the current delays.<\/p>\n

Religious groups and immigration advocates say that the security measures are hurting legitimate applicants and causing worker shortages at churches, hospitals and schools. Many churches have had a tradition of bringing in foreign workers for about 50 years and have strong ties with their counterparts overseas. The Catholic Church, in particular, has relied on foreign priests and nuns to fill local shortages in U.S. vocational workers. Sister Margaret Perron, a Catholic nun and director of religious immigration services at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, said that her office received 65 requests for more evidence on pending cases on the same day last year, signaling a blanket security check, without regard for the details of each case.<\/p>\n

In a notice earlier this month, the Citizenship and Immigration Services said that some of the requests for more evidence sent out across the country did not take into account information included in the applications and that they could be ignored. Perron also said that an application last year for an 86-year-old Catholic nun from Nicaragua to change status from tourist to permanent residence was picked for a “detailed review.” “I just can’t imagine why the case of an 86-year-old little nun in Wisconsin is undergoing review,” she said. The application has been pending for 9 months, Perron said.<\/p>\n

Williams said that site inspections on nearly all applications will result in years of delays for visa applicants. Joel Pfeffer, an immigration lawyer in Pittsburgh, said that the delay will affect many immigrants who are approaching the five-year limit of their temporary religious worker visa, known as an R-1, and have applied for permanent residency. If their visas expire, they are in the United States illegally, he said. The R-1 visa was started in 1990. Pfeffer said one of his clients, a Catholic priest from Uganda, had to return to Africa because of the delay and is waiting there while his application is processed. “The people who have legitimate cases are stuck in this quagmire,” Pfeffer said.<\/p>\n

Dorothy Sandoval, director of pastoral services at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Ore., says the hospital needs a third chaplain to perform a variety of duties, including offering comfort to the sick and last rites to the dying. The job has been offered to a priest from Tanzania who is already working in the United States but needs a change in his visa to work at St. Vincent. Previously, such a change would take about eight weeks, but now, it could take six months or longer, Sandoval said. “This is causing a real stress on my staff and on the patients that we serve,” she said. “There are people out here who are suffering.”<\/p>\n

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