The "R" visa
The "R" visa
Date: Thursday, February 13, 2003 1:39 PM
H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
www.ZaZona.com
As all of you on this newsletter know by now that there are claims of
desperate shortages of programmers, engineers, scientists, teachers,
doctors, nurses, fashion models, pharmacists, radiologists, physical
therapists, etc. etc. Now add one more to the shortage list - religious
workers. Yes, that's right, we have a drastic shortage of religious
workers like priests, rabbis, and Muslim clerics - so Congress created
the "R" visa in 1990 to alleviate the shortage.
R visas are for aliens who have been a member of a legitimate religious
denomination for at least two years and also have a job offer in the
U.S. to work for an affiliate of that same religious organization.
Here is a sampling of some of Congressional testimony of why the R visa
is needed:
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju66254.000/hju66254_0.htm
STATEMENT OF THOMAS COOK, ACTING ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER FOR
ADJUDICATIONS, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE
Mr. COOK. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you
for the opportunity to appear before you today to present the views of
the Immigration and Naturalization Service concerning the special
immigrant religious worker provisions.
The religious worker program provides an important resource for
U.S. religious denominations faced with shortage of domestic religious
workers. The INS supports the legislation to continue this program.
STATEMENT OF JESS FORD, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND
TRADE ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I am pleased to be here
today to discuss the issuance of visas for religious workers entering
the United States. As you know, in 1990 Congress established special
immigrant and nonimmigrant visa categories for religious workers,
including religious professionals and ministers, because of a domestic
shortage in these positions cited by religious organizations. In 1998,
the most recent year for which we have data, religious worker visas
constituted about 11,000 of 6.4 million immigrant and nonimmigrant
visas issued.
Michelle Malkin and Art Moore have different views of the value of the
R visa. You can read both articles to decide on it's merits, but just
remember that the rationale for this visa is the same as for the H-1B,
and therefore it should be abolished. The same lawyers that do H-1B
also do R's. Use Google and search on "R Visa" and you will see what I
mean.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30996
The religious worker visa scam
Posted: February 12, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Michelle Malkin
) 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Call it the Radical Muslim Cleric Importation Plan. Under the religious
worker visa ("R visa") program, an unknown number of Middle Easterners
claiming to be imams or other mosque employees have been admitted to
the United States with minimal scrutiny.
According to a complaint from the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York
unsealed last week, Muslim religious leader Muhammed Khalil, his son
Asim, and three other individuals submitted false R visa applications
on behalf of more than 200 Middle Eastern aliens. Although Khalil and
his cronies were nabbed after an 18-month investigation, federal
authorities are mum on the whereabouts of the Middle Eastern illegal
aliens who purchased fake R visas from Khalil and his colleagues.
The R visa program, created by Congress in 1990, gives visas to
thousands of foreigners to fill alleged domestic shortages among
ministries, nunneries and other religious professionals. In 1998, some
11,000 foreigners received such visas. According to a 1999 General
Accounting Office report, federal investigators have discovered R visa
fraud rings involving churches and other religious institutions based
in Colombia, Fiji and Russia.
The mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Sheik Omar Abdul
Rahman, had an R visa. So did four Palestinian men who worked for the
Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and the Islamic
Association for Palestine both Muslim charities that the State
Department has linked to the terrorist organization Hamas.
The 1999 GAO report highlighted persistent lapses in oversight.
"Neither INS nor [the] State [Department] knows the overall extent of
fraud in the religious worker visa program," the report concluded.
No one knows! Tom Ridge, are you listening? It's going to take more
than duct tape and plastic sheeting to fix this problem.
This much is clear to immigration veterans: The R visa program is a
notorious law enforcement evasion scheme under which a number of
religious facilities have been established as fronts to enable foreign
nationals to enter the U.S. using false identities and evade criminal
and terrorist watch lists.
Khalil's ring charged up to $8,000 per person. His mosque sponsored
more than 200 applicants seeking work visas through the INS program,
alleging they were religious workers who taught the Koran, Islamic
history and the Arabic language. According to the complaint, Khalil
supplied fake names ("Amjad Hussain," "Mohammad Amjad," "Amjad Ali
Chaudhry"); fake degrees (from the University of Punjab); and fake
religious training certificates (for the "Nazra Quran Course").
Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward O'Callaghan revealed in court last week
that Khalil made taped comments to an undercover witness proclaiming
allegiance with Osama bin Laden and fugitive Taliban leader Mullah
Mohammed Omar. "Hopefully," Khalil reportedly mused, "another attack in
the United States will come shortly."
Details about how Khalil first arrived in the U.S., why he was allowed
to stay, and how he came back to acquire U.S. citizenship are sketchy.
But it's enough to raise alarm bells about the continued laxity in
policing fraud in the so-called "immigration services" branch of the
federal homeland security bureaucracy.
Prosecutors said Khalil arrived in the United States in 1973, agreed to
leave the country at the request of the INS in the late 1970s, and
returned in the early 1980s. By 1987, he had secured U.S. citizenship.
Will President Bush's new appointee to head the Department of Homeland
Security's Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services get on the
ball and get to the bottom of this debacle? Not likely. Eduardo Aguirre
Jr., like former Immigration and Naturalization Services chief James
Ziglar, has zero experience with immigration law or law enforcement. He
is a top bureaucrat at the U.S. Export-Import Bank who worked for Bank
of America for 24 years, and whose main qualification is being a Cuban
immigrant who, according to the White House, was named "One of the 100
Most Influential Hispanics in the Nation" by Hispanic Business Magazine
for three consecutive years.
High terror alert? Color me unconvinced.
Michelle Malkin's column is syndicated by Creators Syndicate and
appears in about 100 newspapers nationwide. Her book, "Invasion: How
America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces
to Our Shores," is a national best seller and now available at
ShopNetDaily. All copies of the book sold at ShopNetDaily are
personally autographed.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/7td/7td078.html
Religious Visa Law Extended
by Art Moore
Allegations of widespread fraud threaten an immigration law that many
international U.S.-based religious groups contend is critical to their
work.
But last month, Congress extended for another three years the Religious
Professionals and Other Religious Workers provision in the Immigration
and Nationality Act (INA) shortly after it expired. Evidence of abuse
in the visa application process convinced House immigration
subcommittee chair Lamar Smith to oppose a Senate version of the law
that would have made the special visa category permanent.
Smith, who cosponsored the original bill in 1990, says the State
Department "uncovered a troubling number of scams, both individual and
organized," including churches that sell visas to the highest bidder.
Officials continue to investigate the alleged abuses.
Ministry officials are relieved that the provision has been extended.
But its lack of permanence creates planning problems for international
groups such as Wycliffe Bible Translators. Without the special visa
category, which annually grants up to 5,000 permanent visas to
nonclergy religious workers, Wycliffe would consider moving its
international headquarters abroad, says the group's U.S. director of
personnel, Ken Mayo.
MIX NEEDED: "We need to have a mix of nationalities in our leadership,"
says Mayo, who handles the group's employee visas from its Huntington
Beach, California, office. "The people we're looking for are not
available around here. They might be technically qualified, but they're
not culturally, ethnically, and organizationally qualified." About 90
of Wycliffe's 1,200 U.S.-based workers are not U.S. citizens.
Without the special visa provision, a foreign worker can apply for
permanent residence only through the Labor Department, a process that
can take two years and requires that a job be open to U.S.
citizensregardless of beliefbefore it can be filled by a
foreigner.
"It just doesn't make sense for a religious organization to advertise
in the newspaper for an individual to come work for them and not be
able to specify what their beliefs should be or their doctrines or
their training," says Lloyd Sutherland, director of International
Benefits, a private immigration consulting firm in Reston, Virginia.
World Relief's new director, Clive Calver, a British citizen, acquired
a temporary religious worker visa under a category known as R-1.
The extension of the special INA provision enables Calver to apply for
a permanent U.S. visa to head World Relief, an agency of the National
Association of Evangelicals in Carol Stream, Illinois. A companion visa
categorywhich does not have a sunset clausegives up to 5,000
visas a year to clergy. Calver does not fit in that category because he
fulfills a professional role.
The religious workers provision includes instructors, counselors,
translators, broadcasters, liturgical workers, missionaries, nuns, and
monks.
Smith, a Texas Republican, says he wants further investigation of fraud
before Congress considers making the religious workers visa program
permanent. The current law runs until October 2000.
Copyright ) 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
November 17, 1997 Vol. 41, No. 13, Page 78
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