When the Rev. Ryan Cook addressed his congregation after the Holy Eucharist on January 5, he had just three more weeks to serve as rector of Church of the Ascension in Orlando, Florida, before he and his family would be forced to return to their home country of Canada.
Cook’s abrupt departure from the parish was prompted by a federal backlog in permanent residency applications that has left foreign-born priests serving within U.S. churches in a precarious position.
“Some of you have asked, ‘How are you doing?’ Well, it’s terrible, you know. It’s terrible for myself and my family, and our hopes, and our enjoyment with what we’re doing at Church of the Ascension. … It feels like getting hit by a truck,” Cook told parishioners. “And at the same time, I’ve just been so incredibly blessed in the last few weeks with the incredible care [that] has come through.”
Several priests throughout the Episcopal Church face a similar future: when their R-1 visa (which is granted temporarily to religious workers in the U.S.) expires, they may be forced to return to their home countries, leaving their parishes upended without a pastor.
In the case of Ascension, the church will soon begin the search for its next rector after two years of growth under Cook’s leadership.
“The church is going to go through a search process that neither [Cook] nor the church wants, nor do I or Bishop [Justin] Holcomb want,” said the Rev. Canon Dan Smith, canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of Central Florida. “We’re losing a priest who is doing just outstanding work in that congregation. By any measurable you want to measure, he’s doing terrific work.”
Two other priests in the Diocese of Central Florida in the U.S. on R-1 visas, including another Canadian and a native of Haiti, are seeking recourse before their temporary residency runs out, Smith said.
The crisis follows a procedural change implemented nearly two years ago in the government’s allocation of the employment-based visa category in which religious workers fall, called EB-4.
A typical pathway for foreign-born clergy is to come to the U.S. on an R-1 visa, which permits them to stay in the country 30 months and allows for an additional 30-month extension, for a total of five years in the country. During that five-year period, they may apply for an EB-4 visa, which allows them to stay in the U.S. permanently and provides a potential pathway to citizenship.
In March 2023, the State Department folded in another category of people (minors and refugees from Central and South American countries) to the EB-4 queue alongside religious workers, while maintaining the same 10,000 cap on EB-4 visas awarded annually. That influx of applicants into the visa pool created a severe logjam; as of the end of 2024, the state was processing applications from early 2021.
“If you were here on an R-1 visa and you wanted to immigrate during that five-year period, that used to be easily attainable; it was a six- to 12-month process,” said the Rev. Jonathan Turtle, a Canadian priest who serves as rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, also in Orlando. “Now, it’s a four-year backlog. So now, all of a sudden, it’s harder to do that in that five-year window that you have within R-1. You don’t have the wiggle room.”
For clergy on an R-1 extension, time will likely run out before they are granted permanent residency. At that point, they will be required to leave the U.S. for at least a year before they can reapply for R-1 status.
“But you’re starting from scratch,” Smith said. “You lose your place in line, and of course, that’s after you’ve been gone 12 to 18 months. A church can’t wait for their rector for 12 to 18 months. That’s not good for the congregation; that’s not good for anybody.”
Ordained in the Diocese of Toronto, Turtle served for several years in his home diocese until social media connections and the Diocese of Central Florida’s reputation as a center of thriving, orthodox Anglicanism prompted him to consider opportunities south of the Canadian border.
The Rt. Rev. Greg Brewer, then diocesan bishop, identified Emmanuel as a good fit, and interviews confirmed that for Turtle and his family. He was offered the job in November 2021, and the church took on the role of sponsoring Turtle’s R-1 visa. In October 2022, Turtle was granted his visa. Along with his wife and four children, he relocated in January 2023, starting the clock on his five-year stay.
Now two years into his rectorship, Turtle is hoping there will be enough runway for him to be granted permanent residency before his R-1 visa expires in early 2028. He’s now in line to petition for his EB-4.
“The timeline just barely lines up,” he said. “If it were to work out for us to be able to stay, some things in the next three years would have to change.”
Another priest who relocated from Canada on a temporary visa for his position at a growing Episcopal church in early 2023 is also bracing himself for possible turbulence ahead.
The priest, who requested anonymity, said he never expected to land in Texas, but when the opportunity arose in the wake of the pandemic, he found it was the right opportunity for him and his family. Now, it’s a question of how long they will be able to stay.
“We came here with an initial commitment of three years,” he said. “We’re now in year three, and the longer we’re here, the more difficult it is to see ourselves leaving. But I never expected to be here in the first place, and I never expected anything in my life to go the way it has, and God’s been kind of providentially leading our family. So, I trust that if this door closes that there’ll be another door that opens.”
Many priests came to the U.S. in recent years with the understanding that moving from visa to permanent residency would not be an issue, and the federal backlog represents a change in the rules in the middle of the game, Smith said.
He said the Diocese of Central Florida has retained an immigration attorney to assist the diocese with these clergy cases and to teach him about immigration law.
“This is not a subject that came up when I was in seminary,” he said.
Smith, who functions as transition minister for the Diocese of Central Florida and is assisting Ascension with its rector transition, said he is no longer considering candidates from outside the U.S. unless their immigration status is already decided.
With its prevalence of foreign-born clergy, the Roman Catholic Church faces more widespread disruption as a result of the federal backlog and has taken an active role in lobbying the Biden administration to address the issue. In August 2024, the Catholic Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, and five of its affected priests sued the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services over the procedural change.
A recent study conducted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Migration and Refugee Services found 90 percent of dioceses relied to some extent on foreign-born religious workers.
Equivalent studies within the Episcopal Church are not available, but several diocesan representatives said they are aware of the issue and some reported having priests who are affected. The Episcopal Church received 22 clergy from other provinces in the Anglican Communion, with Canada and England sending the largest share (five each) in 2023, the most recent year of available data.
Those advocating for change say small adjustments to federal procedures could mitigate the issue for clergy. For example, the American Immigration Lawyers Association has petitioned the government to reduce the amount of time those on expired R-1 visas must spend outside the U.S. before they may reapply for that status. Rather than a minimum of a year, the AILA said it should be three months or less.
“This will allow a religious organization to retain their religious worker without experiencing a significant gap in services due to immigration reasons,” the AILA wrote in a letter to the departments of State and Homeland Security.
In the meantime, priests like Turtle are holding their plans loosely.
“Our mindset was, ‘OK this could be two-and-a-half years on an R-1 or it could be, you know, 30 years until I retire,” he said. “So, that’s kind of been our in our mindset coming into this, and I think that remains our mindset; whatever the Lord has in store for us, we’ll run with that. So, for now, we’re here.”
“The ministry experience in Central Florida has been super positive. It’s a great diocese, and Emmanuel is a great parish,” he added. “As a family, we’re really happy there, and I could see myself there beyond the five years that the R-1 permits. It’s just a question of will the government move fast enough?”
Cook exhorted his congregation to press on in mission, even in his absence.
“I am going to do everything I possibly can to make sure that Church of the Ascension is set up for success, and there are things that we can do to keep the work that God has begun here at Church of the Ascension going,” he said. “Even though it feels a little bit daunting to hear announcements like this, the Lord is at work, and don’t you dare let the devil get a foothold because of a little bump in the road.”
Lauren Anderson-Cripps is a domestic correspondent for TLC.
