Visa program used by thousands of nuns set to end

A change to U.S. visa policy is set next week to make it more difficult — if not impossible — for many religious to enter the U.S.

A change to U.S. visa policy is set next week to make it more difficult — if not impossible — for many religious sisters to enter the U.S., and could soon keep contemplative nuns and others from gaining permanent residency in the country.

Religious sisters at the National Eucharistic Congress, 2024. Credit: Pillar Media

With a visa program for non-ordained religious workers due to expire March 13, the USCCB told The Pillar Wednesday that its expiration could hit rural and underserved dioceses especially hard.

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The EB-4 non-minister special immigration religious workers visa program will close March 13, at the end of a short-term extension signed in December last year.

The program, which issues 5,000 visas a year, 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.

The EB-4 Special Immigrant Religious Worker Visa is distinct from the R-1 temporary religious worker visa program, which does not come with an automatic green card. That program, used by foreign-born priests in the U.S., is itself mired in backlogs and delays, which have forced many priests and religious to leave the U.S.

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, are now in jeopardy.

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.

The bishops’ conference noted in 2022 that the statutory provision for non-minister special immigrant religious workers is not a permanent part of U.S. immigration law, but instead sunsets at given intervals.

The most recent such sunset clause was due to come into effect late last year, when President Joe Biden signed a December 21 extension until March 13 of this year.

Confirming that the program is now set to end, recent guidance from the U.S. State Department says that “no [EB-4 non-ministerial] visas may be issued overseas, or final action taken on adjustment of status cases, after midnight March 13, 2025. Visas issued prior to that date will be valid only until March 13, 2025, and all individuals seeking admission in the non-minister special immigrant category must be admitted (repeat, admitted) into the United States no later than midnight March 13, 2025.”

“In the event there is no legislative action extending the category beyond March 14, 2025, the category will immediately become ‘Unavailable’ as of March 14, 2025,” the State Department guidance says.

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.

David Spicer, assistant director for policy for migration and refugee services at the USCCB, told The Pillar 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 end of the non-ministerial visa program will impact more than teachers, catechists, or caregivers.

It will also impact 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.

“I know of a mother superior in Alaska who had to depart the country and leave her community behind,” Spicer recalled, “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 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.

Because the EB-4 visa program is for permanent immigrant status with a path to citizenship, Spicer confirmed that the pending closure would not affect those visa recipients already in the country, since they would have green cards, but nevertheless could affect other religious workers already in the country.

“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. So we could have a really unfortunate situation where somebody has been waiting in the EB-4 backlog, is classified as a non-minister, and then just as they're about to become eligible to get a green card the program is no longer accessible to them.”

While the program is set to close in little more than a week, Spicer said that some kind of extension remains possible.

“We've had a couple of continuing resolutions now, already, for fiscal year 2025 appropriations,” he noted.

“God willing, if Congress were to reach an agreement on a [resolution] by the March 14 deadline, they could take a similar approach and that would extend the non-minister provision, and other programs as well for the duration of the resolution.”

The uncertainty, he said, points to a need for the EB-4 program to be put on a permanent footing, which the USCCB has advocated for.

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.”