U.S. border security has been getting most of the attention regarding immigration but what the country needs is comprehensive immigration reform that addresses both security at the southern border but also longstanding legal immigration problems like backlog in processing green cards.
Just this month the Catholic Diocese of Paterson, N.J. sued five federal agencies handling immigration because of an immigration procedural change affecting foreign religious workers in the U.S., including Catholic priests and nuns.
The change puts foreign-born religious workers into a new category where backlog for processing permanent residency cases have a long waiting list. Therefore, dioceses across the U.S. face the possibility of losing priests due to their cases now not being able to be approved before their visas expire.
Some foreign priests have already been forced to leave or are preparing to leave and the backlog to return could be a year or more than 3 ½ years and could increase. If the situation is not fixed, this could become a crisis for the Catholic Church in the U.S. very soon because there already is a shortage of clergy with low number of native-born priests. The shortage is not just in the U.S., but a Vatican March 2023 report shows the worldwide number of seminarians, priests and men and women in religious orders has declined.
Our Filipino American community across the U.S. holds Catholicism and the Church dear to our hearts and lifestyle. We attend weekly masses and send our children to Catholic schools so this is an important issue for us that we hope can be fixed immediately by the next president and Congress.
In Hawaii and the rest of the U.S., the Roman Catholic Church heavily relies on foreign-born priests. The National Study of Catholic Priests – released in 2022 by Catholic University of America’s Catholic Project – shows 24% of priests serving in the U.S. are foreign-born. Of the U.S.’ foreign-born priests, a full 15% were ordained outside the U.S.
The Catholic Diocese of Paterson, N.J. lawsuit argues that the change “will cause severe and substantial disruption to the lives and religious freedoms” of the priests as well as the hundreds of thousands of Catholics they serve.
Realistically, the new procedural processing could impact every Catholic diocese in the nation. “It’s so disruptive,” said Bishop Mark Seitz, who chairs the committee on migration for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The group has advocated for legislative and administrative fixes because the newly extra-long delays in green card processing are “not sustainable.”
Most religious workers enter the U.S. under temporary visas called R-1, which allow them to work in the United States for five years. If the clergy decides to stay, they can then petition for permanent resident status — known as green cards — for them under a special category called EB-4. But backlogs are taking too long under the new category and priests must return to their native countries due to visa expirations.
Like other immigration advocacy groups, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have been lobbying for long-term comprehensive congressional reform. But gridlock in Congress on immigration has put reform proposals on the backburner year after year.
The recent lawsuit hopes to bring urgency to the matter that if Congress refuses to act, perhaps simpler administrative changes can be implemented quickly to prevent a labor crisis for the Church in the U.S.
Miguel Naranjo, the director of Religious Immigration Services for Catholic Legal Immigration Network, stresses that the situation is not just about ministry, but the education and social services priests and nuns provide. “They’re the last safety net of many communities,” he said.
According to the Democratic platform, the party seeks to increase the number of employment-based visas that are available each fiscal year so that visas aren’t forced to wait decades for a visa. Democrat nominee Kamala Harris hasn’t spoken directly on this, which could help with bringing in new priests to the U.S. Republican nominee Donald Trump’s immigration platform is largely centered on border security.
What is the specific procedural change? The U.S. State Department revealed that for nearly seven years it had been placing in the wrong line tens of thousands of applications for neglected or abused minors from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and they would now start adding those to the general queue with the clergy, which is making dramatic changes to wait times for processing green cards.
Given the important role priests and nuns serve in the Catholic Church and Catholic schools which many in our Filipino community are a part of, we join the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in calling for a procedural fix either by Congress or administratively as the Catholic Diocese of Paterson, N.J. lawsuit seeks.
In Hawaii, the Diocese of Honolulu relies heavily on foreign-born priests, most of whom are from the Philippines.
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