“Many churches and other places of worship rely on foreign-born religious workers to provide services, particularly as fewer native-born Americans enter the vocation. “From 1970 to 2020, the number of priests in the U.S. dropped by 60%, according to data from the Georgetown [University Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate],” reported the Associated Press in 2021. “This has left more than 3,500 parishes without a resident pastor.”
Foreign religious workers come to the U.S. on R-1 visas, which provide a temporary pathway for “ministers and non-ministers in religious vocations and occupations.” The R-1 visa is valid for five years, at which point the holder must either petition for permanent residence status or leave the country for at least a year and apply for a new R-1 visa.
Following a spring 2023 State Department change in green card allocation, religious workers began facing long wait times. The Biden administration started processing neglected and abused immigrant kids in the same green card queue as religious workers, meaning they were competing for the same limited number of green cards—just 10,000 per year. Roughly 100,000 immigrant kids joined the pool. As of this August, the A.P. noted, the backlog “stands at more than 3.5 years and could increase”—potentially up to a decade or more.”
https://reason.com/2024/12/23/foreign-born-religious-workers-are-trapped-in-a-green-card-backlog