Free Republic

Religious organizations are raising an unholy ruckus over proposed changes in religious worker visa regulations that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says would reduce rampant fraud in the program, reports The Washington Post: [R]eligious organizations that increasingly serve immigrant populations cite a need to bring in workers with the spiritual, cultural and linguistic expertise to serve them.Religious worker visas are used to bring in Catholic nuns, Hebrew teachers, Muslim imams and Baptist church administrators, among other workers. In 2006, more than 11,000 of the visas were issued, most to natives of Korea, Israel and India.Religious organizations say no other...

Homeland Security Department officials have discovered widespread fraud in a religious worker visa program that allows thousands of foreigners a year to enter the U.S. and remain here. Last year, the officials found that 33 percent of the visas that investigators examined were granted based on fraudulent information, USA Today reports. "We found that the program had been compromised and the fraud rate was excessively high," Emilio Gonzalez, head of Citizen and Immigration Services at Homeland Security, told USA Today. The visa program was established in 1990 to allow churches, synagogues and mosques to hire qualified foreigners to fill open...