Who can file to bring a person to the U.S. to work as an R-1 temporary Religious Worker? The requirements are quite narrow. You need to be a religious organization. You don’t need to be a church. Other organizations can also file if they are religious. The organization needs to have a religious purpose and carry out religious activities. A church is one obvious example. A mission organization or evangelistic organization would satisfy this definition. A school could satisfy this if it is clearly a religious school that has a religious purpose.
The second major requirement is that your organization needs to have an Income Tax Exemption letter from the Internal Revenue Service. There are two areas of misunderstanding that come up here. The first is that, under US law, a church can be tax exempt without a letter from the IRS. But, the IRS doesn’t care about that. If you don’t have a letter from the IRS, they will not let you be an R-1 petitioner. The second area of misunderstanding here is that a lot of people have a “non-profit” certificate from their local or state government. This is not what the USCIS is looking for. They will only accept the IRS letter.
The requirement of an IRS letter means that a for-profit organization cannot bring over a religious worker, even if the “for-profit” organization really operates for a religious purpose. For example, I know of some Christian radio stations that decided to be “for-profit” to avoid the restrictions of being “non-profit”. Unfortunately, they would not be able to petition for an R-1 even though they really are religious. I also know of businesses that hire chaplains or religious counselors. They could not bring over an R-1 to be a chaplain or counselor because they are not religious organizations.
The petitioner also has to satisfy the USCIS that they are a real organization. There has been a lot of fraud with this program —- with people claiming that their house is a church so that they can bring over a family member. That is why the USCIS requires an IRS letter. But, they also want proof that this “organization” really exists. The USCIS will want to see evidence of bills and brochures and pictures and other documents that show that this organization really exists and does the normal things that organizations do, such as pay rent and electricity and have a building and have meetings.
The Petitioner will need to satisfy the USCIS that they can really pay the compensation for the R-1 worker. If he will be paid a monetary salary, the USCIS will want to see proof that you have the money to pay him. They will want to see that you had enough excess income last year so that you can say that there is room in the budget to pay him. Or, if you have enough cash in the bank to pay his salary for 2 ½ years, that will also normally satisfy the USCIS. What will not satisfy them is the statement that we expect additional income next year and we will use that to pay the new R-1 worker. The USCIS will not accept that. If you are going to pay the R-1 by providing room and board, I like to show pictures of the housing and the cafeteria that you have available for your staff.
Finally, the Petitioner will need to satisfy the USCIS that they really need this new R-1 employee. If you have only thirty people in your church, and you already have a pastor, the USCIS will probably doubt that you really need this person. The reason for this is that they are concerned that you don’t really intend to hire him and don’t have enough work for him, and that instead he will just go get a “secular” job while he is here on his R-1.
Well, that is an overview of what is required to be a petitioner. I hope this is interesting and helpful. There are more and more detailed aspects to these requirements. Remember that this is not legal advice. It is just a summary of certain aspects of immigration law which may or may not apply to your situation. I encourage you to consult an attorney if you think any of this may apply to your situation.
Gunnar Armstrong