SAN ANTONIO, Texas (ABP) — Claudia Munoz wants to work on a church staff and has done everything she can to prepare herself, including traveling from her home country of Chile to enroll at Baptist University of the Americas.
Munoz recently graduated from the San Antonio, Texas, school and began optional career training, working as a graphic artist at the school — the same position she hopes to hold one day on a church staff in Chile.
Months before her student visa expired, she applied for a religious visa so she could work on a church staff in the United States while her husband finished his master's degree. Months after her initial visa expired, she continues to wait.
Munoz remains in the country, but she can't legally hold a job. She and her husband, who is on a student visa, are living off the support they receive from their parents.
“I'm still waiting and hoping, praying I receive it soon because I need to work,” she said.
Munoz's situation is not unique. The United States immigration system affects whom churches can call as ministers, but some experts worry immigrants and religious institutions generally do not understand the intricacies of immigration law.
The situation has been exacerbated by a government report that indicated a 33-percent fraud rate in the country's religious visa program, which allows individuals to immigrate into the United States in order to work in churches. The result of the study has been an increase in scrutiny over religious visa applications, including delay-prone on-site visits for many of the applicants.
One director of missions in the Midwest has waited for nearly a year for a church-starter to arrive. The pastor-to-be has been approved by the Southern Baptist Convention, but he has not received final approval for his religious visa, despite already being in the country legally on a student visa.
Krista Gregory, a consultant with the Baptist Immigration Services Network of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, helps churches deal with such thorny immigration issues. She encourages congregations to ask potential staff members about their citizenship status. And if an individual is not a citizen or is in the country on a visa, then the church must work to hire that person legally.
“The only time they need to ask that question [about immigration status] is if they are thinking about hiring them [on] a full-time status,” she said.
A religious visa is also connected to a specific church, Gregory said. If someone becomes employed by another church, the individual must apply to get the religious visa changed to the new congregation. Immigration guidelines also stipluate that people with religious visas cannot hold multiple jobs.
Baptist University of the Americas, with 20 percent of its student population on student visas, is keenly interested in the visa situation.
When those students seek to work in churches, they apply for religious-work visas through the churches that are hiring them. But people who hold student visas are not supposed to earn money outside of a work-study job through their school. That means congregations cannot legally pay a person with a student visa to be a permanent staff member.
While in college, students can hold full-time jobs — if the school requires it as part of career training. But that position cannot last longer than two consecutive semesters. Students also have the option to devote the year after they graduate to a full-time job as part of optional career training. At the end of the year, they must leave the country, apply for citizenship or apply for a different visa.
Mary Ranjel, director of admissions at the Baptist university, said requests for visas are usually accepted, but nothing is taken for granted.
“Basically all the information is pretty standard,” she said. “But after 9/11, it's been much more rigid.”
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— This is the third in a four-part series on immigration in the United States.