Write to Congress for Religious Worker Visa Reform

We ask for your help in urging Congress to fix the broken Religious Worker Visa Program.

An increasing number of foreign-born priests, brothers, and sisters in the United States—including Maryknoll missioners—will be forced to abandon their ministries and return to their home countries if Congress does not take action.

Under the current law, non-citizen sisters, priests and brothers come to the United States with an R-1 temporary religious worker visa, which permits them to stay for up to five years. Previously, they could apply for and receive permanent residency (a green card) within that time, but a backlog in the green card process has resulted in what is now a 15-year wait. Meanwhile, when the original R-1 visa expires after five years, the religious worker must leave the United States for at least one year and then apply for a new R-1 visa. Religious workers who apply today will be forced to wait more than a decade to receive permanent residency. This is unsustainable for organizations like Maryknoll that depend on international religious workers for our ministries.

There is a bill in Congress that would fix this problem. The bipartisan Religious Workforce Protection Act will allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to extend the R-1 visa for religious workers as they wait for a decision about their green card applications, thus allowing them to stay in the United States and continue serving their communities. We need our foreign-born religious workers to be allowed to continue working in the United States. They are essential to our communities and the continuation of our ministries.

Click here to ask your members of Congress to support this much-needed source of relief for people of faith and communities nationwide. Please consider adding a personalized message regarding the positive ways these religious workers have impacted your life and why their continued presence is important to you.