Why a Catholic Diocese is Suing the U.S. Government

The Catholic Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, seeking a rollback of visa requirements for religious workers, a rule they say could threaten the status and future of foreign-born clergy in the United States.

The diocese is joined by five priests in the lawsuit filed Aug. 8 in U.S. District Court in Newark against the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. According to the complaint, the visas of four of the priests will expire in 2025 and of another in 2026.

Many religious workers immigrate to the United States on temporary visas called R-1s, which allow them to work in the United States for five years, after which they can apply for permanent residency under a special category called EB-4.

The change to the Immigration and Nationality Act they are fighting was announced in March 2023. Categories of applicants who were previously in a separate queue, including minors from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, have now been added to the same queue as religious worker visas. Typically, Congress sets a maximum number of green cards available per year and per category, which is usually determined by professional or family ties to the United States.

With this change, Congress added masses of applications to its category while maintaining the cap on green cards to be issued per year, causing delays in green card applications by clergy and religious workers.

The lawsuit filed by the Catholic Diocese of New Jersey alleges that the change was made without proper notice and directly threatens the plaintiffs' ability to exercise their religious and spiritual vocations.

The abrupt change in the calculation of visa availability and the sudden application of this agency action impose significant burdens on plaintiffs, the complaint states. Plaintiffs will necessarily be deprived of their ability to exercise their religious vocation in the United States and will face significant and undue disruption, cost, and delay in their respective immigration matters.

TIME has contacted the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for comment.

In a July 2023 letter to Congress, the Rev. Mark Seitz, bishop of El Paso, Texas, opposed the procedural change not only on behalf of religious workers, but also on behalf of young children who often wait years as they compete with adults for EB-4 visas.

Unfortunately, the current situation violates both Congress's intent to provide religious organizations and our communities with the workers they need and its express desire to protect vulnerable immigrant youth, Seitz wrote.

In an emailed statement to TIME, a U.S. State Department spokesperson acknowledged that the 2023 policy change had created significantly longer wait times worldwide for religious workers’ green cards, though he did not comment on the litigation.

“It’s an untenable situation,” Lance Conklin, co-chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s religious workers group, said in a statement to The Associated Press. “This lawsuit is representative of what many people are feeling.”

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