Client: A Church in Cleveland, Ohio
Client’s Country of Origin: China
Case Type: Religious Worker
Date of Application: March 25, 2014
Date of Approval: October 15, 2014
Background:
A church in Cleveland wished to hire a choice religious worker to expand its reach into the Chinese immigrant community and strengthen its existing community building efforts.
Challenge:
Some cases are challenging due to the difficulty of argument crafting; while others are challenging due to the tedium of evidence gathering. Religious worker status belongs to the later kind. Though more straightforward than other complicated cases, quality of evidence determines the strength of our argument. Given recent news of fraudulent applications, reviewing officers may be somewhat more skeptical than we may have expected. Therefore, careful documentation saved this case because the reviewer doubted the existence of the church that the minister used to serve. Our timely reply showing that religious meetings actually took place at the claimed location saved the case.
Action:
Herman Legal Group helped our client prove that:
- The minister had been a member of the denomination for two years.
- The church or religious organization was a bona fide religious organization.
- The church or religious organization had sufficient resources to compensate the religious workers’ service.
Result:
After one request of evidence, our client’s case was approved in two and a half months.
