The United States citizenship and immigration service (USCIS) has published a report that shows generalized fraud in its permanent residence program for unaccompanied minors, which has caused a delay in the issuance of visas for priests and religious born abroad, whose visas enter the same category.
According to a published report On July 24, the USCIS has identified a generalized age and identity fraud among the applicants of the Special Youth Immigrant Visa Program (SIJ), for unaccompanied immigrants under 21 years.
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The USCIS revealed that, of the 300,000 SIJ applicants that reviewed between 2013 and 2024, most SIJ petitioners were over 18 years old. Only in 2024, 52% of applicants were 18, 19 and 20 years old. A third of all SIJ applicants were men over 18. The vast majority of applicants, 73.6%, came from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras.
Normally, SIJ petitioners must present evidence that they were “declared dependent on a State Court of Minors” or that, in some way, they have been placed under the tutelage of a state agency or an entity or individual appointed by the Court.
To obtain consent for the SIJ classification, they must provide the “factual reasons why the State Court determined that the foreigner was abused, neglected or abandoned by one or both parents, and why it is in the best interest of abroad to remain in the United States”, together with “evidence that a state court granted or recognized some form of relief by parental abuse”.
The applicants committed fraud in various ways, including the falsification of their age, name and country of citizenship in official documents. In some cases, applicants over 18 who entered the United States without inspection “presented requests before state courts requesting that other foreign adults who also recently entered the United States without inspection were designated as their tutors to be able to present SIJ requests.”
How does this affect priests and religious born abroad?
The news of generalized fraud in the minors program arrives months after it was revealed that an influx of visa applicants for minors resulted in an unprecedented delay in the preference visa category based on fourth category employment (EB-4), the same category used by priests and religious born abroad.
“The increase in the demand for SIJ immigrant visas creates significant pressure in the EB-4 category,” says the USCIS report. “These immigrant visas are numerically limited and are assigned according to the country of origin. Other special immigrants depend on visas of the EB-4 category. This results in significant waiting times for other special immigrants in the United States.”
The report indicated that the “ministers of religion” are among the other special immigrants obtaining visas from the EB-4 category.
According to data trends in the waiting times for EB-4 visas, the growing demand in the category began to climb in 2016. By March 2025-two years after the Biden administration added to the minors to the category-the waiting time for the category extended to five years and seven months.
Every year, Congress decides how many residence cards – visas that grant permanent residence in the United States – can be available per year. These residence cards are divided into categories according to several factors, including employment or the state of relationship with US citizens.
“The process to obtain the status of permanent residence, to obtain permanent residence, which a couple of years ago could probably be done somewhere between 12 and 24 months, now it will take significantly more time,” said EWTN News in March – Miguel Naranjo, director of religious immigration services in the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.
“There is a great demand in the EB-4 category,” Naranjo continued, saying that religious workers had not been previously affected by the increase of unaccompanied minors until the last year and a half, after the State Department designated the entire category as “subject to delays” due to the large increase in demand throughout the category.
The increase occurred after the incorporation of minors into the category by the Biden administration in March 2023, which led to the program to distribute all the residence cards available in the category much Before the end of fiscal year 2023-2024. No more residence cards will be issued until the start of next fiscal year 2025-2026 in October.
Due to the delay, many priests and religious who try to remain in the United States to continue their ministries are at risk of being forced to leave the country before their residence card application has been prosecuted for at least one year.
Normally, religious workers enter the United States with R-1 visas, which have a five-year limit. Meanwhile, religious workers expect to stay in the United States request visas in the EB-4 category. However, the influx of minor applicants has caused a great delay in the category, which means that many religious workers will be forced to leave the country when their R-1 visas expire.
“It makes me feel sad and betrayed,” said Fr. Paschal Anionye, a priest of the Diocese of Warri in Nigeria who works in New York, in reaction to the findings of the USCIS, “especially because my hopes – and those of many Nigerians and Africans in general – to live safely and to study and serve in a multi -cultural environment, multi -ethnic and diverse frustrated ”.
Anione also described the situation faced by priests and religious born abroad as “discouraging”, given the needs of Catholic dioceses throughout the United States.
The Nigerian priest, who is in the United States with an R-1 visa issued in April 2023, plans to request his residence card after his visa is renewed in October.
He said to CNA: “I will feel terrible, horrified and disappointed” if he is forced to return to Nigeria before his request for the residence card is processed, “since I came to the United States not only to seek a safe environment in the face of Christian persecution in Nigeria … but with the genuine intention of serving as a missionary, as my desire has always been my desire since my first days in the seminar.”
He also expressed his fear of putting his mother and brothers at greater risk, saying that his return would not only turn him into a goal, but also renew the threats against them. “I lost a cousin at the hands of kidnappers in 2015 and I still load with the trauma related to security concerns,” he added.
Criminality among SIJ applicants
Concerning data in the report also identified that a subset of 18,829 of the applicants major to the program were “involved in significant crime”, with records that show 36,920 meetings with the law between these individuals, which indicates multiple arrests for some.
According to the report, at least 120 petitioners were arrested for murder, and 200 approved requests were convicted of sexual crimes and forced to register in the National Registry of Sexual Criminals. Other SIJ petitioners were arrested for additional serious crimes, including attempted murder, assault, violation, child sexual abuse, possession and distribution of child sexual abuse, domestic violence, car theft and drug trafficking.
More than 500 SIJ applicants approved for the SIJ classification since 2013 were known or suspected members of violent gangs.
In some cases, the report points out, these gang members, who obtained the status of permanent legal residence as SIJ, were “sought by foreign police authorities for murders they allegedly committed before entering the United States without inspection and presenting (SIJ requests).”
Although the number is relatively small, the report also identified known or suspicious terrorists who presented SIJ requests, including “a Tayikistan foreigner suspected of planning a terrorist attack by the Islamic State (IS) in the United States.”
“Criminal foreigners are infiltrating in the United States through a program aimed at protecting abused, neglected or abandoned children,” said USCIS spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser, who criticized the “activists” judges and the open border policies of the Biden administration.
Congress has presented bipartisan legislation To help keep religious workers, including Catholic priests and religious, in the country extending their visas instead of sending them back to their countries of origin in the middle of the delay in the EB-4 category.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in CNA.
Low Elhabbal
Madalaine Elhabbal is a CNA journalist based in the Washington DC office in EWTN. He has published articles in Catholicvote and has also worked as a foreign language assistant in France. She is a graduate of Benedictine College.