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| July 10th, 2009 |
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Media Contact(s): Mark Eddington and Andrea Saul, 202-224-5251 |
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Printable Version |
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HATCH AMENDMENT TO HELP RELIGIOUS WORKERS PASSES UNANIMOUSLY
Amendment Extends the Special Immigrant Non-Minister Religious Worker Visa Program and the Conrad 30 Program By Three Years |
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WASHINGTON – Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) today announced the bipartisan amendment he offered (Senate Amendment No. 1428) to the Homeland Security Appropriations Act (H.R. 2892) that will extend, for three years, the Special Immigrant Non-Minister Religious Worker Visa Program, the Conrad 30 Program, and a provision to address the immigration-related hardships caused by the death of a sponsoring relative, passed the Senate by unanimous consent.
“Congress’ current practice of extending the Special Immigrant Non-Minister Religious Worker Visa program in six-month spurts has made it extremely difficult for agency officials to administer the program and for religious groups to make long-term plans for their critical staffing needs,” said Hatch. “I am proud to help our country’s religious denominations to continue uninterrupted in their call to serve and provide support to those who are in the greatest need.”
The Special Immigrant Non-Minister portion of the Religious Worker Visa program provides for up to 5,000 foreign-born non-minister religious workers, both religious and lay persons, to enter into the United States to perform pastoral and social services on behalf of religious institutions.
“These workers perform a variety of tasks that assist the individual denomination but also the greater community by working in religious schools, designing and building temples, staffing soup kitchens, homeless shelters and community centers, and performing numerous other critical religious services,” Hatch continued. “By extending the Conrad 30 Program for three more years as well, we can continue to get more doctors to help the underprivileged in this country.”
The Conrad 30 Program allows foreign doctors, who are already in the United States, and who have been trained in the United States, to extend their stay in the country if they agree to practice in medically underserved communities for three years. The program has brought over 8,500 doctors to underserved areas across the country, and to all 50 states, but it expires in September.
Hatch’s amendment also remedies the unintended and unjustified administrative procedure of what has become known as the “widow penalty.” In recent years, several aliens whose spouses died while their applications were stuck in the government’s bureaucracy have filed lawsuits, arguing that their application for permanent residency should not be denied simply because DHS had not yet finished processing the application before the citizen spouse met an untimely death.
Hatch’s amendment would eliminate the requirement that alien widows and widowers of deceased U.S. Citizens must have been married to the U.S. Citizen for a minimum of two years or face automatic denial. Such aliens seeking to stay in the United States would still be required to meet the universal standard for proving to the satisfaction of DHS that their marriage was bona fide and not entered into for the purpose of obtaining an immigration benefit. While the numbers of aliens affected by this penalty are small, several of their cases are highly sympathetic: they include individuals widowed by tragic accidents, and surviving spouses who had young children with the U.S. Citizen before the citizen’s untimely death.
The amendment would also codify in law DHS’s current regulation allowing DHS to continue to consider an alien’s application for permanent residency that had already been in process when the alien’s sponsoring relative dies, subject to the Secretary’s exercise of discretion. Applications may only be considered if the paperwork was on file at the time of the sponsor’s death, and if such aliens have continued to reside in the United States.
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