You may be a religious worker compelled to carry on your work from your home country to the United States. Well, luckily for you, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) offers a temporary worker visa type exclusively fit for you. Namely, this is known as the R-1 visa. Follow along to find out whether you can apply for an R-1 visa and how a proficient Baltimore County, Maryland employment immigration lawyer at Sheri Hoidra Law Office, LLC can help determine your eligibility.
Who is eligible to apply for an R-1 visa?
Like any other visa type the USCIS provides, there are strict eligibility requirements for the R-1 visa. You must ensure that you, without a reasonable doubt, meet all these criteria before having a United States employer fill out Form I-129, Petition for Nonimmigrant Workers, on your behalf. This starts with asserting that you are a minister or a non-minister who works in a religious vocation or occupation. From here, you must check off the following boxes:
- You must have been offered a job by a United States employer that is a non-profit religious organization.
- Or, by a United States employer that is a religious organization authorized to use a group tax exemption.
- Or, by a United States employer that is a non-profit organization affiliated with a religious denomination.
- You must be scheduled to work at least part-time with your United States employer (i.e., an average of 20 hours per week).
- You must have been a member of the same religious denomination associated with your United States employer for at least immediately two years beforehand.
How many religious worker visas are administered per year?
Of note, the USCIS does not place a cap limit on the number of R-1 visas it administers per year. This is unique to other temporary work visa types, such as the H-1B visa (i.e., specialty occupation visa) and the H-2B visa (i.e., temporary non-agricultural worker visa). As of 2024, the cap limits for H-1B and H-2B visas were 85,000 and 64,716, respectively.
This is to say that you may not have to wait as long to receive your R-1 visa as opposed to if you applied for an H-1B or H-2B visa. Generally speaking, it may take the USCIS eight to nine months to process your application, from start to finish. This is unless you qualify for premium processing, along with if you are willing and able to pay the additional $1,500 premium processing fee. If so, you may only have to wait 15 calendar days until you get word from the USCIS.
In conclusion, you must not begin your application process without retaining legal representation from a talented Baltimore County, Maryland immigration lawyer. Contact our firm, Sheri Hoidra Law Office, LLC, today.
