It's likely to get a little harder to ensure that the Polish, Tanzanian, Ugandan and Peruvian priests who minister to the Catholic immigrants of western Massachusetts in their own languages get to stay in the United States.

So too for Filipina nuns staffing hospitals in the Midwest, Mexican seminarians doing pastoral internships in Southwestern states, the Franciscan brother from Nigeria working with immigrant teens, the Irish priest teaching history and the lay catechist from Brazil.

Allegations of fraud that have plagued the religious worker visa program since it was created in 1990 have prompted proposed changes that users of the visas worry will add unnecessary delays and costs.

In the Diocese of Springfield, Mass., one of Father Bill Pomerleau's jobs is to handle the paperwork for eight foreign priests who work for the diocese.

He helps with applications that the would-be employees file with U.S. consulates in their home countries and gathers the supporting documents that the federal office of Citizenship and Immigration Services, or CIS, requires to prove that there's a valid employment offer from a bona fide religious organization. If the immigrants decide they want to stay permanently, he helps them apply to change their temporary visas to permanent ones.

In the last few months Father Pomerleau's part-time position as vicar for international clergy also means he has had to play host to inspectors from CIS who came to the chancery unannounced to ensure the diocese is what it said it is in the visa paperwork and that the church genuinely sought to hire the applicants. The priest is also a reporter for the diocesan newspaper and a pastor.

Such inspections are under way for an estimated 4,000 religious institutions nationwide that have applied for immigrant religious workers, according to CIS spokesman Bill Wright. Between 10,000 and 11,000 religious worker visas are approved each year, about half for temporary workers, he told Catholic News Service.

The others are permanent resident visas, and are capped at 5,000 annually, a limit which typically does not come close to being reached. For comparison, in 2006, a total of 1.26 million people became legal permanent residents of the United States, the vast majority --- more than 800,000 --- under family-sponsored visas. About 160,000 came under various employment-related visas.

Physically inspecting the sponsoring organizations, like the Diocese of Springfield, is one of the steps CIS has taken to address fraud. A survey by the Homeland Security Office of Fraud Detection for National Security found a fraud rate of 33 percent in applications for R (for religious) category visas.

The 2006 survey was a random sampling of 240 of the thousands of applications submitted annually, not a study of cases that were approved. It did not quantify how many examples of fraud it found were caught by CIS verification procedures and no visa issued, Wright said.

The most common type of fraud found was applications in the name of a nonexistent religious institution, he said. Other problems included using the name of an institution that did not support the application or applying for the visa on the basis of one type of job and then taking another one.

Because the Office of Fraud Detection is relatively new, Wright said there is little information about fraud in other visa categories to compare with that found in R visa categories.

A similar survey of applications for I-90 visas, one of the most common types of green cards, found about 1 percent fraud, Wright said. He attributed some of the difference in the percentage of problems to the recent requirement there be biometric data such as fingerprints for I-90 applications.

Fraud detection surveys of other categories of applications to be released in coming weeks will show at least one category with fraud rates comparable to that of the religious workers program, he said. He declined to elaborate until those reports are final.

Fraud allegations have haunted the religious worker visa program since it was created. Each time the program for temporary visas has come up for renewal in Congress --- it currently has been extended through September 2008 --- hearings are held to discuss the benefits of the visa category and its problems.

Proposals have regularly been made to change the regulations to cut down on the possibility of fraud, and some changes have been made in how current regulations are followed, but this is the first major revision of procedures.

Sister Margaret Perron, a member of the Religious of Jesus and Mary, oversees a caseload of more than 900 religious worker visa applications for the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., known as CLINIC.

She explained that under pending regulation changes what has been a three-year visa, with the possibility of a two-year renewal, will now become a one-year visa with the option of two two-year renewals, three steps instead of two for the same five-year limit to the temporary visas.

That change alone adds an extra layer of bureaucracy and fees, set to increase by more than a third, from $190 to $320 for each new application or renewal, under the proposals. Another change will require that all applications go through a two-step process, beginning with CIS approval of the hiring organization before applicants can be considered for individual visas. Currently, some people only apply through consulates in their home countries.

A CLINIC press release said the proposals unnecessarily increase processing times and expenses in a system that can leave religious workers hanging for months. "Maintaining a streamlined and responsive religious worker visa application process is essential to institutions of all faiths," it said.

Sister Margaret said it's not that she's unwilling to put up with some changes to keep the system from being abused.

"Certainly we recognize that there is fraud in the religious worker program," she said. "But there has to be a manner of dealing with it that is more responsive to the needs religious organizations have to bring people in to minister to their communities."

---CNS