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Korea Herald
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Korea Herald
Daughter of Korean priest detained by ICE after visa hearing
A 20-year-old South Korean student at Purdue University and daughter of an Episcopal priest has been detained by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement after attending a routine court hearing over her visa status, according to news reports Sunday. The Episcopal Diocese of New York and immigrant advocacy groups are calling for the immediate release of Go Yeon-soo, saying she was unfairly detained despite having legal status, and that immigration authorities bypassed proper legal procedures. Go, a graduate of Scarsdale High School in Westchester County, is the daughter of the Rev. Kim Ky-rie, the first woman ordained in the Seoul Diocese of the Anglican Church of Korea. According to the family, Go entered the United States in March 2021 on an R-2 visa, a dependent visa for family members of R-1 religious visa holders, following her mother's relocation. The family said her stay was legally extended in 2023 and that her status remains valid through the end of 2025. However, immigration authorities reportedly interpreted her status differently and deemed her stay unlawful. On July 31, Go appeared before the New York Immigration Court and was given a continuance for her hearing, which was rescheduled for October. But shortly after exiting the courthouse, she was detained by ICE agents. She is currently being held at the ICE office in Manhattan and is expected to be transferred to a detention facility for immigrants. 'Her mother receives regular calls from Yeon-soo, and she's being held at 26 Federal Plaza, which, as we know, is not a facility with showers, beds or hot meals,' said the Rt. Rev. Matthew Heyd, bishop coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, during a press conference Saturday. 'These detentions are not only illegal — they're immoral.' The press conference was held outside the ICE office in Manhattan by the diocese and a coalition of immigrant advocacy organizations. The case comes amid growing concerns over the treatment of immigrants, particularly among the Korean community. Last month, Tae-heung Kim, a 40-year-old Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University, was detained by federal agents at San Francisco International Airport and remains in custody.
Newsweek
28-07-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Green-Card Changes Threaten Pastors' Ability To Remain in US
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A bipartisan group of lawmakers is seeking to address changes to the green-card process that placed thousands of foreign-born pastors, priests, nuns and other religious workers at risk of losing their ability to serve in faith communities across the United States. Why It Matters Religious workers across the country could risk losing their ability to stay in the U.S. due to a change made by the Biden administration in 2023 that added minors who have suffered abuse to the EB-4 visa queue with religious workers. Many religious workers come to the U.S. on R-1 visas, which are valid up to five years, and can apply for an EB-4 visa, which gives them lawful permanent resident status. After five years, R-1 visa holders are required to return to their home country if they do not obtain a green card. A backlog created by that 2023 means that the once-shorter processing time has gone up for religious workers, according to the Associated Press. This has upended religious communities across the country that rely on foreign workers, prompting a response from legislators who earlier this year introduced the Religious Workforce Protection Act. A stock image shows a priest reading a Bible near an altar in church. A stock image shows a priest reading a Bible near an altar in church. SeventyFour/iStock via Getty Images What To Know The Religious Workforce Protection Act, introduced by Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, would allow these religious workers to stay in the United States past five years until a decision is made on their green-card application, Kaine's office wrote in a statement earlier this year. Kaine introduced the bill in April with support from Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Jim Risch of Idaho. A similar bill has been introduced in the House. Kaine introduced the bill after hearing about churches losing priests through his parish in Richmond, he wrote in a statement in April. "But as it turns out, this problem is not unique to Virginia—it's impacting religious congregations of many faiths, all across the country," he said. In March 2023, the Biden administration revised how green-card applications are processed for religious workers by merging their category (EB-4) with vulnerable minors from Central America—previously processed in a separate queue, AP reported. Many of those cases had been misfiled for seven years prior to the change, so there has been a backlog ever since. The EB-4 visa is intended for specific immigrant groups, including religious workers, certain broadcasters and now those vulnerable minors, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). There are only about 10,000 EB-4 visas granted annually, though not all go to the religious workers subcategory, and the State Department announced in February that the limit for Fiscal Year 2025 had been reached. What People Are Saying Senator Tim Kaine told AP: "Even as immigration issues are controversial and sometimes they run afoul of partisan politics, we think this fix is narrow enough, and the stakeholder group we have is significant enough, that we're hoping we can get this done." Senator Susan Collins, in an April statement: "When Maine parishes where I attend mass started losing their priests, I saw this issue creating a real crisis in our state. Recently, three Catholic parishes in rural Maine—Saint Agatha, Bucksport and Greenville—were left without priests for months because their R-1 visas expired while their EB-4 applications were still pending. Our bill would help religious workers of all faith traditions continue to live and serve here in the United States while their applications for permanent residency are being fully processed." The Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc. wrote earlier in July: "The RWPA is a short but powerfully impactful piece of legislation with three key parts. First, it would allow religious workers with an approved I-360 to continue to file extensions of their R-1 status until they can file their I-485 applications. This would have kept many religious workers in their communities over the past two years, without forcing them to leave and apply for a new period of R-1 time after a year abroad." What Happens Next The Senate and House bills currently await action in committees, and faith groups are closely monitoring their prospects. Until legislative or administrative remedies are enacted, foreign-born clergy and religious workers will likely continue to face significant challenges in maintaining their roles within U.S. communities.
Boston Globe
27-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Faith leaders hope bill will stop the loss of thousands of clergy from abroad serving US communities
Faith leaders say even a narrow fix will be enough to prevent damaging losses to congregations and to start planning for the future again. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Unless there is a change to current practice, our community is slowly being strangled,' said the Rev. Aaron Wessman, vicar general and director of formation for the Glenmary Home Missioners, a small Catholic order ministering in rural America. Advertisement 'I will weep with joy if this legislation passes,' he said. 'It means the world for our members who are living in the middle of uncertainty and for the people they'll be able to help.' Two thirds of Glenmary's priests and brothers under 50 years old are foreign-born — mostly from Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and Uganda — and they are affected by the current immigration snag, Wessman added. So are thousands of others who serve the variety of faiths present in the United States, from Islam to Hinduism to evangelical Christianity, providing both pastoral care and social services. Advertisement No exact numbers exist, but it is estimated that there are thousands of religious workers who are now backlogged in the green card system and/or haven't been able to apply yet. Congregations bring to the United States religious workers under temporary visas called R-1, which allow them to work for up to five years. That used to be enough time for the congregations to petition for green cards under a special category called EB-4, which would allow the clergy to become permanent residents. Congress sets a quota of green cards available per year divided in categories, almost all based on types of employment or family relationships to US citizens. In most categories, the demand exceeds the annual quota. Citizens of countries with especially high demand get put in separate, often longer 'lines' — for several years, the most backlogged category has been that of married Mexican children of US citizens, where only applications filed more than 24 years ago are being processed. Also in a separate line were migrant children with 'Special Immigrant Juvenile Status' — neglected or abused minors — In March 2023, the State Department suddenly started adding the minors to the general green card queue with the clergy. That has created such a bottleneck that in April, only halfway through the current fiscal year, those green cards became unavailable. Advertisement And when they will become available in the new fiscal year starting in October, they are likely to be stuck in the six-year backlog they faced earlier this year — meaning religious workers with a pending application won't get their green cards before their five-year visas expire and they must leave the country. In a report released Thursday, US Citizenship and Immigration Services blamed the EB-4 backlogs on the surge in applications by minors from Central America, and said the agency found widespread fraud in that program. The Senate and House bills would allow the Department of Homeland Security to extend religious workers' visas as long as their green card application is pending. They would also prevent small job changes — such as moving up from associate to senior pastor, or being assigned to another parish in the same diocese — from invalidating the pending application. 'Even as immigration issues are controversial and sometimes they run afoul of partisan politics, we think this fix is narrow enough, and the stakeholder group we have is significant enough, that we're hoping we can get this done,' said Democratic Two of the last three priests there were foreign-born, he said, and earlier this month he was approached by a sister with the Comboni missionaries worried about her expiring visa. Kaine's two Republican cosponsors, Senators 'It adds to their quality of life. And there's no reason they shouldn't have the ability to have this,' Risch said. 'Religious beliefs spread way beyond borders, and it is helpful to have these people who … want to come here and want to associate with Americans of the same faith. And so anything we can do to make that easier, is what we want to do.' Advertisement Republican Representative Mike Carey of Ohio, with Republican and Democratic colleagues, introduced an identical bill in the House. Both bills are still in the respective judiciary committees. 'To be frank, I don't know what objections people could have,' said Lance Conklin, adding that the bill doesn't require more green cards, just a time extension on existing visas. Conklin cochairs the religious workers group of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and often represents evangelical pastors. Faith denominations from Buddhism to Judaism recruit foreign-born clergy who can minister to growing non-English-speaking congregations and often were educated at foreign institutions steeped in a religion's history. For many, it is also a necessity because of clergy shortages. The number of Catholic priests in the United States has declined by more than 40 percent since 1970, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a research center affiliated with Georgetown University. Some dioceses, however, are experiencing Last summer, the Diocese of Paterson — serving 400,000 Catholics and 107 parishes in three New Jersey counties — and five of its affected priests sued the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Advertisement Expecting some action on the legislative front, the parties agreed to stay the lawsuit, said Raymond Lahoud, the diocese's attorney. But because the bills weren't included in the nearly-900-page 'We just can't wait anymore,' he said.
27-07-2025
- Politics
Faith leaders hope bill will stop the loss of thousands of clergy from abroad serving US communities
Faith leaders across the U.S. are hoping a bipartisan bill, recently introduced in the U.S. Senate and House, might finally bring resolution to an immigration issue that has been hindering their service to their communities for more than two years. In March 2023, the Biden administration made a sudden change in how the government processes green cards in the category that includes both abused minors and religious workers. It created new backlogs that threaten the ability of thousands of pastors, nuns, imams, cantors and others to remain in the United States. The bill only tackles one small part of the issue, which sponsoring lawmakers hope will increase its chances of passing even as immigration remains one of the most polarizing issues in the country. Faith leaders say even a narrow fix will be enough to prevent damaging losses to congregations and to start planning for the future again. 'Unless there is a change to current practice, our community is slowly being strangled,' said the Rev. Aaron Wessman, vicar general and director of formation for the Glenmary Home Missioners, a small Catholic order ministering in rural America. 'I will weep with joy if this legislation passes," he said. "It means the world for our members who are living in the middle of uncertainty and for the people they'll be able to help.' Two thirds of Glenmary's priests and brothers under 50 years old are foreign-born — mostly from Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria and Uganda — and they are affected by the current immigration snag, Wessman added. So are thousands of others who serve the variety of faiths present in the United States, from Islam to Hinduism to evangelical Christianity, providing both pastoral care and social services. No exact numbers exist, but it is estimated that there are thousands of religious workers who are now backlogged in the green card system and/or haven't been able to apply yet. Congregations bring to the United States religious workers under temporary visas called R-1, which allow them to work for up to five years. That used to be enough time for the congregations to petition for green cards under a special category called EB-4, which would allow the clergy to become permanent residents. Congress sets a quota of green cards available per year divided in categories, almost all based on types of employment or family relationships to U.S. citizens. In most categories, the demand exceeds the annual quota. Citizens of countries with especially high demand get put in separate, often longer 'lines' — for several years, the most backlogged category has been that of married Mexican children of U.S. citizens, where only applications filed more than 24 years ago are being processed. Also in a separate line were migrant children with 'Special Immigrant Juvenile Status' — neglected or abused minors — from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Hundreds of thousands sought humanitarian green cards or asylum after illegally crossing into the U.S. since the mid-2010s, though the Trump administration recently cracked down on the program. In March 2023, the State Department suddenly started adding the minors to the general green card queue with the clergy. That has created such a bottleneck that in April, only halfway through the current fiscal year, those green cards became unavailable. And when they will become available in the new fiscal year starting in October, they are likely to be stuck in the six-year backlog they faced earlier this year — meaning religious workers with a pending application won't get their green cards before their five-year visas expire and they must leave the country. In a report released Thursday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services blamed the EB-4 backlogs on the surge in applications by minors from Central America, and said the agency found widespread fraud in that program. The Senate and House bills would allow the Department of Homeland Security to extend religious workers' visas as long as their green card application is pending. They would also prevent small job changes — such as moving up from associate to senior pastor, or being assigned to another parish in the same diocese — from invalidating the pending application. 'Even as immigration issues are controversial and sometimes they run afoul of partisan politics, we think this fix is narrow enough, and the stakeholder group we have is significant enough, that we're hoping we can get this done,' said Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who introduced the Senate bill in April after hearing about the issue in his Richmond parish. Two of the last three priests there were foreign-born, he said, and earlier this month he was approached by a sister with the Comboni missionaries worried about her expiring visa. Kaine's two Republican cosponsors, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jim Risch of Idaho, heard from voters worried about losing many faith leaders. 'It adds to their quality of life. And there's no reason they shouldn't have the ability to have this,' Risch said. 'Religious beliefs spread way beyond borders, and it is helpful to have these people who … want to come here and want to associate with Americans of the same faith. And so anything we can do to make that easier, is what we want to do.' Republican Rep. Mike Carey of Ohio, with Republican and Democratic colleagues, introduced an identical bill in the House. Both bills are still in the respective judiciary committees. 'To be frank, I don't know what objections people could have,' said Lance Conklin, adding that the bill doesn't require more green cards, just a time extension on existing visas. Conklin co-chairs the religious workers group of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and often represents evangelical pastors. Faith denominations from Buddhism to Judaism recruit foreign-born clergy who can minister to growing non-English-speaking congregations and often were educated at foreign institutions steeped in a religion's history. For many, it is also a necessity because of clergy shortages. The number of Catholic priests in the U.S. has declined by more than 40% since 1970, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a research center affiliated with Georgetown University. Some dioceses, however, are experiencing an uptick in vocations, and some expect more will be inspired by the recent election of Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pope. Last summer, the Diocese of Paterson — serving 400,000 Catholics and 107 parishes in three New Jersey counties — and five of its affected priests sued the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The lawsuit argues that the 2023 change 'will cause severe and substantial disruption to the lives and religious freedoms' of the priests and the faithful they serve. The government's initial response was that the Department of State was correct in making that change, according to court documents. Expecting some action on the legislative front, the parties agreed to stay the lawsuit, said Raymond Lahoud, the diocese's attorney. But because the bills weren't included in the nearly-900-page sprawling legislation that Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law earlier this month, the lawsuit is moving forward, Lahoud said. 'We just can't wait anymore,' he said.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nvidia becomes first company to reach $4 trillion market value
Nvidia (NVDA) on Wednesday became the first publicly traded company to hit the $4 trillion mark, surpassing fellow tech players including Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL). The chipmaker's stock price is up 22% year to date and 24% over the past 12 months. The move comes as the chip giant continues to ride the wave of generative AI hype that kicked off with the introduction of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022. Nvidia's chips, modified graphics cards, and CUDA software platform are designed to both train and run AI programs, giving it a strategic advantage that rivals AMD (AMD) and Intel (INTC) continue to struggle to overcome. Tech behemoths, including Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG), Meta (META), Microsoft, Tesla (TSLA), and others, are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the company's hardware as they build out the data centers necessary to provide cloud-based AI offerings to their customers and create their own internal AI models. Nvidia's stock price has been on a roller coaster this year. The company took a $600 million hit to its market cap in January after DeepSeek revealed its R-1 model, which the company claimed it was able to train using less than top-of-the-line chips. Wall Street went into meltdown mode as fears arose that Nvidia's pricey data center chips were falling out of fashion. Couple that with concerns that the AI industry was moving from training AI models to inferencing, or using, AI models, and the market started to believe Nvidia's processors were no longer necessary. But so far, both of those have proven wrong. Nvidia's chips are still among the best for training AI models, and the industry has shown that inferencing benefits from more powerful AI processors, as they allow them to answer more complex questions. Nvidia has also benefited from the growth of so-called sovereign AI, or AI data centers that allow countries to use their own AI services rather than rely on those abroad. The company is expected to supply hundreds of thousands of chips to countries including Saudi Arabia and those across Europe. Additionally, Nvidia has managed to shake off the Biden and Trump administrations' bans on the sales of its chips to China. While the company took a massive $4.5 billion hit to its bottom line in its most recent quarter due to the ban and anticipates a larger $8 billion writedown in the current period, its stock price continues to climb. With the chip maker set to release its next-generation Blackwell Ultra chips — and no competitor in sight — it could continue to grow even further. Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@ Follow him on X/Twitter at @DanielHowley. Sign in to access your portfolio
