President Trump Can Continue Supporting the Faith Community by Reversing Biden’s anti-Christian EB-4 Retrogression

Under the Biden-Harris administration’s open-border policies, immigrant priests, nuns, and missionaries were forced to leave the country to make way for unvetted, criminal immigrants, and many of these faith leaders are still coping with the fallout today.  

In 2023, the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security revealed it had been miscalculating the percentage of immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala receiving green cards. In response, the administration passed the EB-4 Retrogression which opened up the special EB-4 visa for religious workers to unaccompanied minors and refugees.  

This flooded the pool applicants for green cards, which are given out in a limited amount each year. As a result, the window for religious workers to apply for their green card retrogressed four years, in some cases, forcing priests, nuns, and missionaries who were here legally on R1 visas to leave the country, and in many cases making it extremely difficult for law-abiding, long-term residents of the U.S. to receive their green cards even while following procedures.  

In short, the Biden-Harris administration deprived deserving religious workers of green cards to give them instead to South and Central American migrants and further the administration’s loose immigration policies to support invading our country with criminals. Those detrimentally impacted by the change are not just the religious workers themselves but also the people they serve.  

The change is hitting Catholic circles in the United States especially hard where 90% of dioceses are supported by international clergy. Many of the religious workers affected by the policy also serve the poor in America’s inner cities with no government funding and no strain on public resources. Despite rhetoric about caring about these communities, the Biden administration prioritized shipping out faith-based support for these neighborhoods in order to import more bad actors.

Maybe the most notable example are the sisters of the Fraternity of Notre Dame, who serve the poor in Detroit, San Francisco, Chicago, and other cities across the United States through private donations. The French sisters, who have resided in the States legally on R1 visas for several years are now close to being forced out of the country due to the large number of migrant applicants for EB-4 visas.

The time is ripe for the Trump administration to step in and make this right. The Biden DOJ prosecuted nuns. The Biden FBI targeted traditional Catholics, and the Biden DHS forced religious workers out of the country.  This is a prime opportunity for President Trump to reverse the Biden administration’s anti-Christian and open borders legacy and return the EB-4 visa to its special status for religious workers.