U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services | April 19, 2007U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is proposing to amend existing regulations pertaining to special immigrant and nonimmigrant religious worker visa classifications. The proposed rule focuses on how the agency can best ensure the integrity of the religious worker program by eliminating opportunities for fraud in the program while, at the same time, streamlining the process for legitimate petitioners.

BACKGROUND

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 1999 incidents of fraud in the religious worker program. The report found that fraud often involved false statements by petitioners about the length of time an applicant was a member of a religious organization, their qualifying work experience, and the position being filled. The report also noted problems with the applicants making false statements about their individual qualifications and plans while in the United States.

USCIS has since continued to assess the potential for fraud in the religious worker program. The agency’s Office of Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS) found a 33 per cent rate of fraud in the program; their assessment also indicated patterns of potential fraud and weaknesses that created vulnerabilities for fraud to occur. Together with GAO’s earlier report, the FDNS assessment shows a justifiable and compelling need to address the issue. USCIS’ proposal, if implemented, will decrease the opportunity for fraud in the religious worker program.

PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE REGULATIONS

• Petitioning Requirements

• USCIS proposes to require the filing of a petition in every instance (the requirement already exists for special immigrants and for organizations seeking to extend the stay or adjust status for nonimmigrant religious workers already in the U.S.).

• Currently, non-immigrants outside of the U.S. may request a religious worker visa at a consular post or at the port-of-entry without a review of the legitimacy of the petitioner and the job offer.

• The employing U.S. organization must complete and submit the Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker (Form I-129) or Petition for a Special Immigrant (Form I-360).

• This proposed requirement will allow USCIS to verify the legitimacy of the petitioner and the job offer prior to the issuance of a visa or admission to the U.S.

• Petitioning employers are required to submit an Attestation (included in the Forms I-129 and I-360) verifying the worker’s qualifications, the nature of the job offered, and the legitimacy of the organization.

• On-site Inspections

• Notifies petitioners that USCIS may conduct on-site inspections of the organization seeking to employ either a nonimmigrant or a special immigrant religious worker.

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Inspections are intended to increase deterrence and detection of fraudulent petitions and to increase the ability of the agency to monitor religious workers and ensure their lawful status in the U.S. is maintained.

• Evidentiary Requirements for Petitioning Organizations

• Proposal requires that petitioning organizations submit a currently valid determination letter from the Internal Revenue Service showing that it is exempt from taxation as it relates to religious organizations.

• Petitioning organizations that are not classified as “religious organizations” by the Internal Revenue Service may establish that they are affiliated with the religious denomination by completing the Religious Denomination Certification in the revised Forms I-129 and I-360.

• Nonimmigrant Religious Worker Classification

• USCIS is proposing to amend the standard initial period of stay for nonimmigrant religious workers from three years to one. The revision gives the agency the opportunity to review whether the terms of the R-1 visa have been met. (Requests for two potential extensions of two years each will be considered).

• Every petition for an R-1 classification must be initiated by a prospective or existing employer through the filing of a Form I-129 with USCIS. The beneficiary (the religious worker) will no longer be able to obtain an R-1 visa at a U.S. Consulate abroad or at a port-of-entry without prior approval of the Form I-129 by USCIS.

• Special Immigrant Religious Workers

• USCIS is expanding its interpretation of prior work experience to include work that is not in the exact same position as the job offered.

• The proposal allows for a short break in the continuity of the required two-year prior experience when the beneficiary was engaged in further religious training or on a sabbatical.

• New Definitions and Proposed Changes to Existing Definitions

• To streamline the regulations, the proposal focuses on the distinctions between workers in a Religious Vocation and workers in a Religious Occupation, whether in a professional capacity or not.

• A definition of Denominational Membership is added to clarify how a petitioner can establish that the beneficiary is a member in the same religious denomination as the U.S. employer seeking to employ him or her.

• Expands the definition of Religious Occupation to focus on duties that “primarily, directly, and substantially relates to the religious beliefs or creed of the denomination.” Such a change distinguishes between committed religious work and non-qualifying work that, while may be incident to religious duties, cannot by itself warrant classification in the religious worker category.

• A clear distinction is made between Bona Fide Nonprofit Religious Organizations and Bona Fide Organizations which are Affiliated with the Religious Denomination to account for the two types of petitioners who may seek to employ religious workers.

• Ministers are defined as individuals duly authorized by a religious denomination to conduct religious worship and other duties performed by clergy. The proposal adds that the minister must be “fully trained according to the denomination’s standards.”

• The term Religious Denomination applies to a religious group or community of believers governed or administered under some form of ecclesiastical government.

• The proposal amends the definition of Religious Vocation as one referring to a formal lifetime commitment to a religious way of life.

PUBLIC COMMENT

• To comment on the proposed rule, please submit written comments on or before June 25, 2007 by one of the following methods:

• Federal eRulemaking Portal: www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments.

• Mail:

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Director, Regulatory Management Division
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Department of Homeland Security
111 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, 3rd Floor
Washington, D.C. 20529.

Please reference DHS Docket No. USCIS-2005-0030 in your correspondence. This address can be used for paper, disk, or CD-ROM submissions.

• Hand Delivery/Courier:

Regulatory Management Division
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Department of Homeland Security
111 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, 3rd Floor Washington, D.C. 20529

Contact Phone: (202) 272-8377

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“The US mission is alarmed by the rush of clearly unqualified visa applicants in recent weeks. A significant number of applicants are relying on incorrect information and are using false documents to support their applications,” US Consul General Peter Kaestner told reporters here on Wednesday.

He said it had decided on touch steps to curb visa fraud and while biometric samples and electronic images of a person’s face were already being taken besides two fingerprints, “fingerprints of all 10 digits will now be taken to make it impossible for anybody to cheat to get a visa”.

Replying to a question on the recent case of alleged involvement of some MPs in human trafficking, Kaestner said they had strict procedures in place to detect such fraud.

“Only a few months back, we had this gentleman who pretended to be from the Congress party and gave us false documents to obtain a visa but he was caught,” he said.

He said from October 2005 to September 2006, 4.6 lakh visa applications had been processed while between October 2006 and September 2007, they were expecting the figure to jump to 7 lakh.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. Senate approved an immigration bill Thursday that would toughen security at the Mexican border and grant many illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship.

The action set the stage for another battle as lawmakers try to mesh it with the stricter bill passed by the House in December.

The House version solely focused on border security and enforcement immigration law and did not contain any legalization provisions, which many conservatives, especially in the lower chamber, decry as “amnesty.”

The House bill also contains a controversial provision that would make illegal immigration a felony.

The Senate legislation has a temporary-worker program, which President Bush supports but is not part of the bill the House approved.

The Senate voted Wednesday to cut off debate on its measure, setting the stage for Thursday’s vote.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, said that “the most contentious part” of the bill is handling the millions of immigrants now in the country.

Under the Senate bill, those who have been here two to five years would enter a temporary-worker program, while those here longer would be eligible for legal status or citizenship after an 11-year probationary period.

“I do support that provision as written in the bill,” Frist said about allowing illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said, “I think it’s really the only viable solution that you can arrive at, given that there’s 11 million or 12 million people who are already here illegally.

“You can’t send them back. The status quo is not acceptable, so you have to find a way to, I think, not forgive them and not say, ‘Look, you can just be citizens,’ but give them a very tough path to citizenship,” McCain told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” (Watch McCain explain why he’s proud of the immigration bill — 4:55)

Under the Senate legislation, Illegal immigrants in the United States less than two years would be sent to their home countries.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, said that while he sees the bill easily clearing the Senate, reconciling it with the House version will require tough negotiation and compromise.

“I think one of the requirements is that it has to be a comprehensive approach, that you’ve got to deal with the 11 million that are here illegally, you have to deal with the future flow, and you have to secure the border,” Brownback said Thursday on “Fox & Friends.”

“If we do one, the rest of it isn’t going to work, and you’re going to be back in the same soup in a few years,” he said.

McCain said he was optimistic the plans can be reconciled.

“We’re not drawing any lines in the sand. And I think that already we are hearing at least some proposals from the House side that deserve consideration and certainly show some movement on their part,” he said on ABC.

House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, noted the gulf between the two versions of the bill.

“We have two very separate and distinct directions that we’re going [in] when it comes to controlling our borders, enforcing our laws, where the House was, where the Senate has provisions that go far beyond that. And I don’t underestimate the difficulty in the House and Senate trying to come together in an agreement,” Boehner told a news conference Thursday.

“But I’m hopeful that we will come to a resolution and pass a bill.”

Boehner stressed the importance of the border issue to the House. “You can’t control the problem without first strengthening the borders and beginning to enforce the laws,” he said.

Frist had once supported the House version of the bill, which would send all illegal immigrants to their countries.

But the likely 2008 Republican presidential candidate said he has changed his position because “a mature understanding” over the handling of illegal immigrants has emerged in the Senate after two weeks of debate.

“Many have been assimilated into our society; 40 percent have been here longer than 10 years, have had kids go to high school and college and now have jobs,” Frist said. “And therefore, we put together a compromise.”

With Senate passage inevitable, a group of six Republicans held a news conference Thursday to stress their opposition to the bill — and to ask that the House moderate its stance in conference committee.

“This legislation, I think, is well outside of what I would consider responsible reform. It’s misfocused. It puts the cart before the horse,” said Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, speaking with Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona, George Allen of Virginia, John Cornyn of Texas, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and David Vitter of Louisiana.

Santorum said any final bill must include provisions for border security, employer verification of employees’ immigration status and a temporary-worker program that fills needs in this country.

As the discussion continued in the U.S. capital, Mexican President Vicente Fox, on whose border a 370-mile fence would stand, was on a swing through three American Western states.

“Mexico believes that it will take more than just enforcement, building walls, to really solve the challenge posed by the migration phenomenon,” Fox said Wednesday in Seattle, Washington, according to The Associated Press.

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MURKY self-described patriot groups call them “terrorists.” On combative talk radio shows the term is “illegal aliens.” Advocates for immigrants prefer the Emma Lazarus-evoking “economic refugees.”

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The most common label attached to the estimated 12 million foreign-born people living in the United States without visas may be “illegal immigrants,” even though some grammarians argue that the adjective can modify actions and things (like left turns and hallucinogenic drugs) but not people. President Bush, a proponent of offering citizenship to at least some of them, has used the more optimistic and implicitly promising term “undocumented immigrants.”

There is an almost magical power in naming things. To give a person, an act or a group its name is to define it, assert a measure of control over how it is perceived. (See Adam, in Genesis 2:20, who “gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.” Also, see the playbooks of most campaign managers.)

Like the battles over civil rights and abortion, the contest over immigration has been joined as much in the naming of things as in the writing of laws. Consider the labyrinth of language in play as Congress grapples with an overhaul of immigration policy, its effort to fix what is widely considered a broken system of deciding how many and which foreigners are allowed to enter, work in or become citizens of the United States.

Tumbling in the air of the debate like so many juggled balls are enough words and catch phrases — some old, some new — to form a peculiar dialect of the national ambivalence: Guest workers. Willing workers. America’s security. Permanent temporary residents. Immigrant smuggling syndicate. Earned legalization. Virtual fence. Birthright citizenship abuse (coined by lawmakers who would cancel the citizenship rights of children born here to illegal immigrants). Anchor babies (the term coined for such children). Police state (what Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York says would result if illegal immigration were criminalized). Two-time losers (Justice Antonin Scalia’s phrase for illegal immigrants who are deported twice — one such immigrant brought a case heard by the court last week).

George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of “Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate,” says the different language used in any public policy debate is ultimately a contest for the public mind. “Metaphors repeated often enough eventually become part of your physical brain,” he said. “Use the word ‘illegal’ often enough, which suggests criminal, which suggests immoral, and you have framed the issue of immigration to a remarkable degree.”

Every side, of course, claims that its choice of words is not only correct but a reflection of the literal truth. Those favoring more restrictive laws, for instance, assert that people who violate immigration laws are, de facto, illegal residents.

“Immigration is such an emotional issue at this point that every word is being hotly contested,” said Frank Sherry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a group based in Washington that advocates a liberalized policy. “You know where people stand pretty much from the language they use,” said Mr. Sherry, who uses the term “undocumented immigrants.”

A House bill that would stiffen penalties for unauthorized immigration adds yet another term to the list of synonyms for the illegal immigrant: felon. Under that bill, which led to protests in Washington, Chicago and San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, illegal immigrants would be charged with aggravated felony and face five years in prison.

A Senate bill produced yet more terminology — earned legalization — which would apply to illegal immigrants who pay their back taxes and stiff fines, promise to learn English and wait in line. Earned legalization is not to be confused with amnesty, a word in the immigration debate that is a bugaboo to all sides, on the theory that rewarding illegal behavior would only lead to more of it.

The language can be so arcane that even people who track immigration policy might have been hard pressed to follow the conversation on ABC’s “This Week” between the host, George Stephanopoulos, and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist. In one 10-second exchange, Mr. Frist said he was for enforcement, and Mr. Stephanopoulos asked if Mr. Frist was also for guest worker, to which Mr. Frist replied that he was for guest worker but against amnesty.

Enforcement, in the debate, is code for border security. The enforcement-only bill passed by the House focuses exclusively on tightening border security. It authorizes the building of a 700-mile fence, or the deployment of electronic devices and drone aircraft to create a “virtual fence.” It does not establish a guest worker program.

The enforcement-plus bills under review in the Senate (there are three, with a fourth pending) tighten border security and create versions of a guest worker program. (In Washington, to be in favor of “enforcement-only” or “enforcement-plus” is to state one’s immigration weltanschauung.)

As for the meaning of “guest worker” in the enforcement-plus universe, it depends. It can signify a long-term foreign worker who might eventually become a citizen. It can also indicate someone who works for two years with no such expectation, and then goes home. It can be a seasonal worker who goes home after every harvest. And in the most restrictive version, it is perhaps a little like the homey status of the political prisoners in Frank O’Connor’s short story “Guests of the Nation.” The prisoners are treated like friends of the family until one is ordered executed in the national interest.

Ultimately, there may be no neutral language possible in the immigration debate — any more than there is in other emotionally charged human interaction, said Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and the author of the best-selling “You’re Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation.” Ms. Tannen claims no special expertise about immigration, but she knows communication. “People cling to words, and use them, as a way of showing whose side they’re on, who their people are,” she said.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a performance artist and writer born in Mexico known for his observations about the cultural life of the border, has coined his own term for the movement of people, legally or illegally, temporarily or permanently, willingly or not, from south of the border to the north. In a recent performance, he mordantly referred to it all as “original sin.”

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WASHINGTON – The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has grown to as many as 12 million, and they now account for about one in every 20 workers, a new estimate says. Efforts to curb illegal immigration have not slowed the pace, said a report Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Instead, the report’s author said, those efforts are having an unintended consequence: People who illegally enter the United States from Mexico are staying longer because it is harder to move back and forth across the border.

“The security has done more to keep people from going back to Mexico than it has to keep them from coming in,” said Jeffrey Passel, a senior research associate at the center.

It is difficult to accurately measure the number of illegal immigrants in the United States, but most public agencies and private groups had settled on a figure of about 11 million.

The Pew Hispanic Center used Census Bureau data to estimate that the United States had 11.1 million illegal immigrants in March 2005. The center used monthly population estimates to project a current total of 11.5 million to 12 million.

The report estimates that 850,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in United States each year since 2000.

President Bush has called for a program that would grant temporary worker status to illegal immigrants already here. The House rejected the program and instead passed a border security bill last year that leaned toward lawmakers who were calling for a crackdown.

The Senate is trying to address both border security and the temporary worker program, but consensus has been elusive. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has said he hopes his panel will produce a bill by the end of March.

There are about 7.2 million undocumented workers in the U.S., or about 5 percent of the country’s work force, the Pew report said.

It estimated that illegal immigrants fill a quarter of all agricultural jobs, 17 percent of office and house cleaning positions, 14 percent of construction jobs and 12 percent in food preparation.

“Especially if we look at the Mexicans, these are people with fairly low levels of formal education,” Passel said. “They’re not able to get licensing or credentials in the United States because of their status, so the kinds of jobs available to them in the United States are somewhat limited.”

Business leaders and advocates for immigrants’ rights argue that America’s economy would collapse if all the illegal workers were deported.

“Undocumented immigrants do pay taxes, and they do contribute to the economic, social and cultural developments of their communities,” said Peta Ikambana of the American Friends Service Committee. The group was organizing a rally near the Capitol on Tuesday to protest the House bill.

“Just building walls will not stop immigration,” Ikambana said. “Those that are here will just go underground.”

Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates tougher border enforcement, said he isn’t surprised that the number of illegal immigrants continues to climb. He called the government’s crackdown halfhearted at best.

Camarota pointed to a recent government report showing that very few businesses are fined for hiring illegal immigrants. The government filed only three notices that it intended to fine companies in 2004, down from 417 notices in 1999, according to a report by the

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Camarota said there would be plenty of Americans willing to accept jobs done by illegal immigrants if they paid adequate wages and benefits.

Tuesday’s report by the Pew Hispanic Center said Mexicans make up 56 percent of illegal immigrants. An additional 22 percent come from other Latin American countries, mainly in Central America. About 13 percent are from Asia, and Europe and Canada combine for 6 percent.