President Trump signed into law a continuing resolution aimed to avoid a government shutdown on Saturday, bringing with it a vital extension to a visa program used by thousands of non-ordained Catholic religious workers.
The president signed the short-term budget measure March 15, after it was approved by the Senate on Friday, relying on a handful of Democratic votes to avoid a filibuster. Had it failed, it would have provoked a government shutdown.
While the measure contained small increases for defense spending, it also included some $13 billion in cuts to other government departments and programs. The measure was politically contentious because, critics of the measure argued, it did not reign in the administration’s ongoing bid to curtail government spending which had already been approved by Congress, with funding allocated by legislation.
However, largely unremarked upon, the bill also included an extension for the EB-4 Special Immigrant Religious Worker Visa program. The program, which issues 5,000 visas a year, was previously due to sunset last week with the expiry of a previous continuing resolution signed by then-president Joseph Biden in December last year.
The new continuing resolution, covered in the sections treating the Department of Homeland Security, provides for the extension of the program through September of this year.
The EB-4 non-minister program is used by Catholic religious orders and other institutions to secure permanent residence — and a path to citizenship — for a range of non-ordained applicants ineligible for other kinds of religious worker visas.
There are two kinds of EB-4 visas available under the current system: ministerial and non-ministerial, with the first class usually only available to clergy or their equivalent — those qualified to lead religious worship or perform the equivalent of sacramental ministry.
Non-ministerial EB-4 visas allow for religious organizations to sponsor workers who are not ministers to immigrate to the United States, in order to perform services in their religious vocations or occupation.
Those kinds of visas, which are used by religious communities and diocesan-sponsored laity, were set to be ended last week in the event that no resolution was passed.
According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “examples of those working as part of a vocation include nuns, monks, [religious] brothers, and sisters.”
Work performed by those visa holders includes care for the sick, aged, and dying in hospitals and special facilities, work in youth ministry, religious education in parishes and Catholic schools, and leadership or administration of Catholic religious orders and institutions.
Prior to the non-ministerial immigrant religious worker visa program’s introduction in 1990, religious organizations attempting to use traditional employment immigration categories for non-ministerial workers faced “sometimes insurmountable obstacles,” according to the bishops’ conference.
“The resulting consequences were that religious entities found that they could not sponsor workers at all or could not do so within a timeframe that corresponded to their needs,” the conference said in 2022.
The bishops have, in the past, called for the EB4 program to be put on a stable legislative footing to avoid the kind of uncertainty created by last week’s near discontinuation of the program, and a likely repeat to come in September.
In April 2024, Bishop Mark Seitz, chair of the conference’s Committee on Migration, wrote to legislators, noting that “the wait time for an EB-4 visa has increased drastically for most nationalities, now far longer for this category than any other employment-based category.”
The bishop urged “that Congress permanently reauthorize this small but important program.”
David Spicer, assistant director for policy for migration and refugee services at the USCCB, told The Pillar last week that thousands of Catholic religious workers have entered the country via the program over the last three decades.
“All of our men and women religious and other laypersons who may come as missionaries or in other capacities, they fall into this non-minister category,” he explained.
“I think probably the Catholic Church accounts for the largest number of these non-ministers within the program… We have priests and deacons defined as ministers, and then everyone else would fall into the non-minister category. So it's a very significant impact that ‘non-ministerial’ portion is having on Catholic ministries across the country.”
But Spicer said, the non-ministerial visa program impacts more than teachers, catechists, or caregivers. It also has a significant impact on religious vocations, he said.
“With formation for the priesthood, a diocese will usually send a man to a formal seminary associated with an institution of higher education, so that could provide a different opportunity for a student visa perhaps,” Spicer said. “But in the case of religious congregations, it's not always the case that their formation is so formal that they could have the postulant on a student visa.”
Instead, Spicer said, leaders of religious communities have relied on the non-ministerial religious worker visa programs for members in formation. And since religious profession is a lifelong commitment, the path to permanent residency is important.
“The geographic scope of the dioceses there make it very difficult to minister to Catholics spread all throughout such a large territory. And so foreign-born religious workers are often the only real way that they can do that.”
Spicer added that the non-ministerial visa program is used for cloistered religious, and religious sisters who work in the administration of their congregations and orders.
“I know of a mother superior in Alaska who had to depart the country and leave her community behind,” Spicer said, “and that had significant impact on the Church there in Alaska, which is one of the places where we rely most heavily on these foreign-born religious workers.”
The EB-4, as a permanent immigrant visa program, is distinct from the R-1 temporary religious worker visa program, which does not come with an automatic green card, permanent immigrant status, and a path to citizenship
The R-1 program, used by foreign-born priests in the U.S. and granting only temporary entrance to the country, is itself mired in backlogs and delays, which have forced many priests and religious to leave the U.S.
Spicer told The Pillar that while distinct, any disruption to the EB-4 visa program could also have a knock on effect on R-1 workers.
“There is the potential for somebody who's here on an R-1 visa, and even with the backlog there, we may have men in women religious and others who fall into the non-minister category who are here within their five year temporary period when their visa number comes up for the EB-4, to be able to get a green card,” he said.
“But in order to take advantage of that, the program still has to be available,” Spicer said.
