Dear Readers:

We are pleased to report this week on the hopeful beginning of the end of a year of problems processing non-immigrant and immigrant visas for religious workers. Over the past year, in an effort to crack down on fraud, the USCIS started becoming extremely tough in processing religious worker cases, frequently issuing decisions that seemed to introduce new requirements not envisioned by Congress and sometimes ignoring the law all together. For example, USCIS examiners rejected many applications by parochial schools around the country because the schools, while clearly religious in nature, were not churches, synagogues, mosques or temples. The problem is that the law actually allows for institutions like this to qualify anyway as long as the institution could show that it would qualify as a religious organization under the federal tax rules. Many religious schools can qualify under either the educational organization tax exemption or the religious organization tax exemption. Choosing either makes no difference from a tax point of view so a school's accountant will often pick the educational category. USCIS decisions have punished schools that did this even though the law clearly provided otherwise.

For an Administration that claims to be for strengthening and promoting the role of religious organizations in their community work, the USCIS approach of the last year seemed to be a major contradiction. Many of the religious workers denied entry were precisely the people working on the faith-based initiatives that President Bush has promoted.

So how could this particular Administration be the one in charge of a USCIS that suddenly became anti-religion almost to an extreme? We suspect that this happened without the knowledge of the White House. It might surprise readers to learn that it is really not unusual for career USCIS, State Department and Labor Department officials to make policy decisions that contradict the philosophy of the President they are serving.

Another example of this is the recent change in the HHS J-1 physician waiver program. The folks running that program recently introduced changes to the program that effectively end waivers for the agency. To be perfectly blunt, the officials at HHS who instituted the policy change double-crossed the White House and members of Congress. The White House only learned of these changes recently and HHS' actions certainly should embarrass the Administration.

Finally, as always, we remind readers that we're lawyers who make our living representing immigration clients and employers seeking to comply with immigration laws. We would love to discuss becoming your law firm. Just go to http://www.visalaw.com/intake.html to request an appointment or call us at 800-748-3819 or 901-682-6455.

Regards,

Greg Siskind