Religious workers are not the only ones affected by delays. According to the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based libertarian think tank, the employment‐based green card backlog reached a new record of 1.8 million cases in 2023.

It’s causing some churches to rethink plans to recruit faith leaders from abroad.

That includes pastor David Cantillo, the leader of Iglesia Tampa Bay Para Cristo, at 1110 E. 139th Ave. in Tampa.

“There are too many issues in the process, and they take too long,” Cantillo said.

If nothing changes, Arenas, his wife and their 3-year-old daughter, who was born in the U.S., must return to Colombia and stay there for at least a year, leaving the congregation of over 300 behind. After a year, he might be eligible to renew his visa and return to the U.S. along with his family.

Experts said that as many as 33,000 religious workers are in the queue for permanent legal status, with around 25% of those from Latin America, according to estimates based on the State Department’s records. A year ago, over 100,000 minors with the “special immigrant juvenile” status were waiting to obtain green cards, according to a report by the National Immigration Project and Tulane Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic.

Omar Angel Perez, immigrant justice director at Faith in Action, a nonprofit that works with immigrants and minority communities, said the backlog is a symptom of a broken system that “devalues humanity.”

“It’s past time for congressional leaders to fix it so that people like foreign-born religious workers who are an invaluable piece of the fabric of our society are not stuck in an unstable situation,” Perez said.

Arenas still hopes for good news to come before the end of the year. He doesn’t want to disappoint his community and friends, he said, who are unaware of his legal problems. Only the church leaders are informed about the situation but they feel powerless to do much about it, Arenas said.

Two years ago, he and his wife, Ana, 23, bought a house in Zephyrhills, thinking they were setting themselves up for a promising future. But now thinking about the future makes him anxious, he said.

“My work and my life are in America,” said Arenas. “I don’t know what to do. But we have faith — a lot of faith.”

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