The town of Cactus, Texas, may not have a Walmart, but it does have a mosque and a halal meat market. The meatpacking plant, dairy and farming jobs in the town of about 3,000 people attract a large number of asylum seekers and refugees. “There is no community when you have 20 to 26 different nationalities living in a town of this size,” said Alshandra Visagie, executive director of Cactus Nazarene Ministries.
The ministry works with people who know little about life in the United States. Visagie and her staff teach the immigrants, many of whom live in mobile homes near the packing plant, how to shop for food. They teach budgeting and hold English classes. She and her husband have started a church where community members gather most Sundays for a meal.
But Visagie is worried that a delay in processing her green card could disrupt her work just as it’s beginning. She and her family moved to the United States from South Africa in February 2022 on a two-and-a-half-year religious worker visa that expires next June. They can renew their visa once for a total of five years. After that, they plan to apply for green cards and become permanent residents. But because of long waiting periods, they may not be able to do so before their visas expire.
Congress allocates a limited number of green cards in several categories based on job skills or relationships to family members already in the United States. Countries with disproportionate numbers of immigrants are separated into their own queues so that immigrants like the Visagies can apply for green cards before their visas expire. Religious worker visas are an employment-based fourth preference visa (EB-4), a category that includes people who have assisted the US military, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as children who have been abused or exploited in their home country.
But on 1 April, the government stopped separating thousands of children from El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala into their own category, adding years to the wait for religious workers. Unless Congress intervenes, religious workers will have to leave the country when their visas expire. Many are scrambling to switch to another visa to extend their stay.
Immigration attorney Lance Conklin looked into the change after receiving a worried email from a client. “I immediately knew, ‘This is going to be huge,'” he said. “You’re looking at a 10- to 15-year wait.”
Applying for a green card is a two-step process. If a person’s visa expires while they’re in the first stage of the process, they must leave the country for at least a year before they can apply for another religious worker visa to buy more time. “That creates all kinds of challenges for churches,” Conklin said. It also means hundreds of dollars more in application fees. The second stage of the process allows green card applicants to live and work in the country until they receive their green card. At least 10 of Conklin’s clients were in this second stage when the rule change lengthened the wait starting in April. “They were at the front of the line,” he said. “When midnight struck, they were now two, three, four or five years behind.”
The State Department issues 10,000 EB-4 visas a year; traditionally, immigrants from a given country can only receive 7 per cent of all visas. EB-4 green cards are issued in a similar way.
In recent years, the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have been plagued by increasing gang violence, forcing thousands of families and children to flee. Abandoned, abused or neglected children were eligible for a Special Immigrant Juvenile visa, which Congress placed in the same EB-4 category and green card application line as religious workers visas. Green card applications soared, but the State Department separated applications from Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries into a separate line, so the backlog only affected religious workers from those countries.
But earlier this year, the State Department decided it had done the wrong thing. Officials said they shouldn’t have separated the children into a separate line, despite their overwhelming numbers, because Northern Triangle applicants weren’t using up all the slots in other visa and green card categories. There is currently an estimated backlog of 40,000 visas for vulnerable children, overwhelming the estimated 5,900 religious worker visas available in 2022, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
This puts churches and ministries that rely on foreign-born, immigrant pastors in a bind. As immigrant communities explode across the United States, more congregations than ever need pastors with the “language and cultural skills to lead congregations with unique needs,” said Matthew Soerens, World Relief’s US director of church mobilisation and advocacy. “Many denominations rely on this programme.”
Flavio Barbosa, a Brazilian on a religious worker visa, leads a predominantly Portuguese-speaking congregation in a town outside Orlando, Fla. “It’s a big problem,” he said of waiting for a green card, adding that he doesn’t want to think about the possibility of leaving his church.
Conklin is helping some of his clients apply for a more general, employment-based green card with a shorter waiting period. But he says it’s more expensive and not an option for everyone.
Only Congress can fix the problem, either by removing the applications of vulnerable minors from the EB-4 category or by extending visas for religious workers while they wait. Lawmakers passed a similar exemption for employment-based green applicants on H1-B visas. A backlog of applicants from India has forced many to wait for decades. But Congress allowed them to remain in the country if they applied for a green card before their visas expired.
“There is no such law for religious workers,” Conklin said, adding that he is sceptical that Congress will act on the issue anytime soon.
In the meantime, the administration could reduce the amount of time a person must remain outside the country after their visa expires before returning on another visa. Officials could also make it easier for religious workers to change jobs without having to restart the green card process. Exemptions currently allow H1-B visa holders to keep their place in the green card queue even if they have to reapply for a promotion or change of job.
Visagie and her family plan to apply for their green cards at the same time they renew their visas, to get a head start on what has become a years-long process. “And then keep the green card in process and pray that something changes in immigration law that will allow this process to be expedited,” Visagie said.
If not, they’re preparing to leave the country. “We know that this is exactly where God has called us to be,” she said, adding that they’re trusting God to move and praying for His guidance. “We believe that if you’ve called us, you will open doors that no one can close.”
