how do you prove how do you know somebody is devout faithful religious holy how do you know
somebody is truly a minister that was what was at stake in this R1 application and R1
is a religious visa to bring a minister from a foreign country into the U.S this
was a Chinese Pastor coming into the U.S to Pastor a church we filed a great R1
application but we got a very challenging request for evidence this video will talk
about how to do it the next video we'll talk about how we got the Green Card let's go
hi my name is Joseph I'm the managing partner here at Zan Associates where we solve legal problems
with Creative Solutions so the legal problem was how do you prove somebody is a minister
what are your duties how are you Faithful are you devout what are your qualifications so we
first filed this R1 application over here it was 17 pages with 42 exhibits we went in depth because
anytime you do these type of cases it's always very challenging somebody from China is not a
typically religious country but in a secular country where there's not a lot of theological
seminaries and conferences and Mission work and activities that's like widespread how do
you prove somebody was actually a Christian let alone a pastor right and so part of the
R1 application you need to prove somebody has a two-year membership with an organization that's
affiliated with the U.S entity so we had to draw that bridge that wasn't too hard in this
case because a lot of ministers and missionaries from the U.S have went back and forth for to their
particular congregation and so we were able to set up that link how do you prove their qualifications
well he was already a pastor for so many years we have a lot of sermons so we collected a lot of
these documentation does the U.S entity the the church in the U.S have enough funds and ability
to pay the minimum wage for for this pastor we documented the church's membership and amount of
savings that they have in their costs and did a break-even analysis kind of like a business plan
but it's for a non-profit so documented all of that what was surprising was after we filed this
application 17 Pages very in-depth argumentation we got this request for evidence and it heavily
challenged the position it's not a crazy position he was a pastor he's coming here to be a minister
also a pastor in the U.S he's not replacing another head Pastor he's just an additional
Pastor to this Chinese congregation USCS said you indicated the beneficiary will work as a minister
however the record is insufficient to show that the beneficiary has been ordained as a minister
by the religious denomination to establish that the beneficiary qualifies to perform the duties
of a minister within the religious denomination so there's a lot of separate prongs to that they
Define what a minister position is um they Define please provide the following additional evidence
we need a certification of the ordination or similar documents documentation reflecting the
acceptance of beneficiaries qualification and if the religious denomination does not require
a prescribed theological education please provide additional things the thing I love most about R1
applications it's it's actually very much related to constitutional law freedom of speech freedom
of religion now think about that if USCIS is imposing their viewpoint on who can be a minister
to a U.S entity and have a certain faith that is essentially a state government running religion
in other words it's kind of like you can be a monk you cannot be a monk you are a Christian
you are not a Christian you're a minister you're not a minister you can go to heaven you go to hell
right that's essentially what USCS is treading it's a fine line and USCIS is very careful to that
and there's a lot of case law surrounding this so it's so fun dealing with R1 applications because
a hand in hand ties to religious uh constitutional cases super fascinating federal law so you can see
from the language they cover their grounds it's a catch-off we want your proof of ordination if you
don't have it that's okay prove to me that the the organization accepted it without the ordination if
you don't have that prove to me that you have some other qualifications that was accepted and that it
is generally acceptable because ultimately they are still adjudicating the religious visa and if
you don't have the documents to prove it then they are denying you on the grounds of insufficient
evidence they're not making a religious claim they're just talking about documentation you see
what they did there it's very very tricky but it's within the scope of what they have to do so how do
we deal with that we went through the bylaws of the organization in the U.S looking through every
single thing about what other qualifications of a deacon what are the qualifications of an elder
what are the qualifications to even be a member of this organization who are they looking for who are
the past pastors how do they go about making this decision how many membership meetings do they have
do they have a vote what was the presentation what was the resume that was presented to the
uh to the church right so we documented all of that and proved that our client went through this
entire very convoluted very difficult interview process finally getting the votes to be accepted
and of course the certificate of ordination we've provided everything I as well as previous
certifications from other seminaries because again a Chinese Minister doesn't really have
a lot of these key documents because the country just doesn't provide that right and there's no
infrastructure so if you require it then you're essentially saying nobody from China can ever be a
pastor in the U.S because they don't have the key requirements so we made that argument now because
he was a pastor for such a long time he was able to travel the world he was invited to be a speaker
at many conferences around the world from other reputable seminaries and conferences and so we
were able to document all of that so even though he didn't specifically have what USCIS was looking
for we explained all these other things that they had and his in-depth knowledge of scripture we
provided four letter recommendations as well as from Seminary professors talking about his
qualifications so this went above and beyond to prove our client completely fulfills the minister
requirement his duties and his projects and why this church qualifies to sponsor him after filing
that request for evidence the case was approved he stayed here in the U.S and then we filed the
EB for the 360 application there was no rfe then the case was immediately approved and now the
entire family wife and children all have green cards we need to do a separate story about the
ev4 because that was also challenging because it was covid there was a whole bunch of other issues
which we'll dive into then but if you have any questions about R1 and you know the definitions
of a minister how do you prove you have the faith would love to talk to you take care bye