Faith Groups Oppose New Rules on Religious Worker Visas

c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Atop Mount Waialeale on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, the Iraivan Temple is designed to be one of the most splendid Hindu temples in the world. So far, the temple that was started 32 years ago is about half-finished. But the $16 million granite temple may never be completed, […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Atop Mount Waialeale on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, the Iraivan Temple is designed to be one of the most splendid Hindu temples in the world. So far, the temple that was started 32 years ago is about half-finished.

But the $16 million granite temple may never be completed, some American Hindu leaders worry, after U.S. immigration officials in March denied religious worker visas to six shilpis, the specially trained masons who build temples in accordance with Hindu scripture.


“Within Hinduism, building temples is a religious occupation,” said Sannyasin Arumugaswami, managing editor of Hinduism Today magazine and a disciple at the Kauai monastery. “These kinds of workers that can do this, they don’t exist in the United States.”

Arumugaswami worries the recent rejection of more workers portends difficulties for his and other faith communities if the government adopts new proposed rules on religious worker visas.

Critics of the new rules, which were announced in April and could take effect as early as September, say they could deprive many religious communities of the workers they need to lead services, do missionary work and perform other important tasks.

Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Mormon and Mennonite groups have all officially registered their concerns with the government during a public comment period that closed Monday (June 25).

“The obvious impact is going to be to restrict the availability of religious visas to individuals and religious organizations that otherwise would have qualified,” said David Leopold, vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association

The religious worker visa program was established in 1990 to help short-handed religious organizations employ foreign workers; an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people receive religious worker visas each year.

In 2006, the top five countries of origin were India, Mexico, South Korea, Brazil and Colombia.


But last year, the Homeland Security Office of Fraud Detection and National Security released a report that said agents found a 33 percent rate of fraud in religious visa applications.

Immigration officials say the changes reflect concerns about national security, and insist the needs of religious organizations have not been discounted.

“We want to make sure we’re addressing our vulnerabilities. The proposed changes strengthen the program,” said Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Several people who submitted comments about the proposed changes agreed that the program was being abused. “Alleged religious `workers’ who come here are instead acting to cause illegal immigrant sneaks to come here to freeload on our systems,” wrote Barb Sachau of Florham Park, N.J. “End this entire program now.”

Opponents, meanwhile, say the 2006 report was based on only 220 applications _ too small a sampling to reliably document fraud.

“There is not enough evidence to warrant these rule changes,” said Ishani Chowdhury, director of the Hindu American Foundation, an advocacy group based in Kensington, Md., a Washington suburb.


Hindu and other religious officials have complained that the new definitions and requirements are written from an almost exclusively Christian perspective that doesn’t take into account other religious traditions.

For example, new definitions for “religious worker” don’t cover occupations such as shilpi, which Chowdhury said are “essential” to religious practice in Hinduism.

“You can’t bring them in because there is no definition for them,” said Chowdhury. Without shilpis, she worries, many planned Hindu temples will never get started while others may stay unfinished.

Another change requires people who come to work in monasteries to have taken life-time vows. But in Hinduism, religious students start their training by taking short-term vows, and don’t take their life-time vows until after several years of training.

The new rules also require applicants to prove they are affiliated with the denomination of the house of worship they will be working at, but don’t recognize that inter-denominational Hindu temples are common in America.

Existing regulations are vague enough to give immigration officials a certain amount of leeway in interpreting requirements, permitting them to give entry to religious workers who are not explicitly defined in the regulations.


Now, Arumugaswami and other religious leaders worry that flexibility has been replaced by narrow definitions that exclude a broad number of religious workers.

Many Christian organizations stand to be affected as well.

Jeffrey Apthorp of the Bible Broadcasting Network based in Charlotte, N.C., and broadcasting on more than 200 stations, asked rulemakers to “broaden the terminology regarding denominations to include highly public religious ministries that elect not to officially affiliate with a recognized denomination in order to refrain from being exclusionary.”

Another change would shorten the stay of a visa from three years to one year. For foreign religious workers, this could mean more time filing renewals and less time working, while for religious organizations, the consequence is a less stable staff.

Catholic Bishop Robert Vasa of Baker, Ore., said the foreign workers his diocese depends on usually take two to three years to develop the skills necessary to serve effectively in the United States.

“Limiting a Religious Worker’s length of stay only means that I must recruit another, less effective Religious Worker to take the place of the one whose term is ending,” Vasa wrote in his comments. “With more than a dozen such workers in my Diocese it is almost impossible for me to establish a stable `workforce.”’

The new proposals also require religious workers to be paid, which would restrict the volunteer workers that many faith groups depend on. That could affect Mormons, who send _ and import_ young men and women for two-year mission trips.


There are now roughly 1,500 Mormon R-1 visa holders in America doing such missionary work who, under the new rules, wouldn’t be allowed into the United States. They would have to go to another foreign country to fulfill their religious mandates.

Many believe that these and other rules _ including more documentation that will increase the cost of applying for religious worker visas _ are simply designed to keep applications down.

But Bentley, the USCIS spokesman, denied that.

“We’re looking to make sure we keep this process open to legitimate organizations that use it,” he said. It’s not meant to be cumbersome, it’s looking to make sure the opportunity is still there.”

KRE/RB END SACIRBEY1,150 words, with optional trim to 975

Photos of workers at the Iraivan Temple are available via https://religionnews.com.

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