America’s visa woes have hit even the religious community, immigration lawyers and church workers revealed here over the weekend.

“The INS (now called the Citizenship &Immigration Service) discovered, over the last seven years, that there has been a lot of fraud in the issuance of R visas,” church worker Edward Busque told ABS-CBN’s Balitang America, at a Migrant Workers day forum.

The R visa is issued to aliens proceeding to the United States to work in a religious capacity. In its broadest interpretation, they can be issued to anyone “engaged in habitual activity that relates to a traditional religious function,” including liturgical workers, religious instructors, workers in religious healthcare facilities, translators and religious broadcasters.

Busque helps organize visits of Filipino church workers for the Holy Spirit Church, a Protestant church organization with a presence in 50 states.

The number of religious workers entering the United States on an R-1 visa has grown form nearly 11,000 in 1998 to over 25,000 – plus nearly 7,000 of their dependents by 2007.

Busque said he was told by immigration authorities that they believe as many as one-third of those who received the R visa were not really religious workers.

He said that until recently, the U.S. Embassy in Manila could issue R visas. But the Department of Homeland security (DHS) has changed the rules, and all applications now have to be approved in the United States.

Church workers shortage

Fr. Pete Literal ministers to hundreds of inmates in Virginia’s jails.

“The number of catholic priests and religious in the country is still so short compared to the amount of ministry that we have to do for Catholics,” he explained.

The shortage is felt across most church groups and large parts of America. It was this shortfall that paved the way for the influx of foreign church workers.

“The R visa has become restricted because it has been abused,” Atty. Arnedo Valera, executive director of the Migrant Heritage Commission (MHC), said.

“This is because they expanded the definition of church workers. Even non-ministers who perform religious functions were included in this category,” he said.

“There are two categories of R visas,” Atty. Kristine Tungol, legal editor of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, explained to ABS-CBN News “One is for non- immigrant petitions. You come here not as a green card holder, but as a non-immigrant worker. Then there is the immigrant petition for special visa for religious workers,” she said.

“If you want to petition someone, first of all, you have to be a legitimate religious organization. A lot of people coming in from the Philippines are those petitioned by a Catholic organization, and they have ties to the Vatican,” Tungol said.

“However, what’s complicated is because they (DHS) really want to crack down on all frauds that are happening. You have instances where the people filing for petitions or the applicants are not actually working in that specific capacity. They’re just getting the visa, and in effect, they’re buying the visa. And that’s why there’s a crackdown in the R visa,” she added.

Valera said the majority of R visa beneficiaries are legitimate, “but because the system was abused by some, the government has now restored to on-site inspection and they (religious groups) are audited.”

He added that there were already moves to abolish the R visa but was stopped by a vigorous lobby that succeeded because there is, in fact, a need to fill the shortfall in religious workers in the United States.

Addressing the shortage

Valera said there is now pending legislation in Capitol Hill that aims to address the twin issues of filling a religious need and plugging the loopholes in existing laws.

Busque explained that church workers now have to undergo a process akin to those of Filipino nurses and teachers with job contracts in the United States. The waiting time, he alleged, could take from six to 12 months. He said they are trying their best to cope with the new rules.

“Definitely there will be an effect, but we don’t have control over that. From the church perspective, what the government is doing is all related to homeland security,” Literal explained.

“The Catholic church here is very proactive because they are recruiting vocations in the country, generating Americans to be priests. But that will still not be sufficient because we have currently a big, big shortage,” he said.

The shortage, Literal said, stems from the effects of a growing population and not enough young Americans taking up the vocation.

But it could take more than a vigorous recruitment campaign to lure more people to fill the shortage of religious workers.

“Even if we fill up all the seminaries, that’s not a guarantee all of them will become priests,” Literal said.

He suggested this was one problem in America that might require divine intervention.