RELIGIOUS DENOMINATION
Immigration regulations found at 8 C.F.R. define “religious denomination” as
A religious group or community of believers having some form of ecclesiastical government, a creed or statement of faith, some form of worship, a formal or informal code of doctrine and discipline, religious services and ceremonies, established places of religious worship, and religious congregations, or comparable indicia of a bona fide religious denomination.
For the purposes of this definition, an interdenomination [sic] religious organization which is exempt from taxation pursuant to section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 will be treated as a religious denomination." Of all the world religions, Christianity has the most formal hierarchies among its various denominations. Because other religions lack this hierarchical governance, USCIS tends to regard each of those religions as a single denomination. For example, the organizational hierarchy established in the Muslim religion does not tend to reach beyond the local level, and USCIS will generally not raise the question of whether an Imam will be coming to work in the same denomination in the U.S.
For members of Christian churches, however, the question of the denomination to which the R-1 or I-360 beneficiary belongs is often a tricky one. Some Christian denominations, such as the Roman Catholic church, have a very formal hierarchy which presents no problems in the immigration context, so long as the beneficiary worked in the Roman Catholic Church both abroad and in the U.S. However, there are many Christian churches that do not associate themselves with a larger denomination at all. They may be community churches or simply non-denominational. Or, a church may ascribe loosely to Pentecostal beliefs such as the ability of Christians to speak in tongues. A preacher may work for a Pentecostal church in a foreign country and have a job offer at a Pentecostal church in the U.S. with a very similar set of beliefs. But if the foreign and the U.S. churches are not governed by the same organizational hierarchy, then under a plain reading of the regulation, the two churches belong to different denominations.
We have successfully argued in many cases that if the religious denomination in which the alien worked abroad has a similar statement of faith to that of the U.S. denomination in which he will work, then the organizations qualify as part of the same “denomination”. This argument is particularly successful when aliens are applying for R-1s at a U.S. Consulate abroad. The argument has been questioned by USCIS, however. The reason the consulate is more accepting is that it is run by the U.S. Department of State, which is deeply involved in international affairs and wary about infringing on first amendment guarantees of free exercise of religion. However, USCIS does not share this concern to the same degree. The argument is nevertheless successful in most cases with USCIS and is still worth making.
The problem that the “same denomination” requirement poses for many Christian R-1 and I-360 beneficiaries can be summed up as follows: because the Christian church has splintered into so many denominations, the fact that some of the denominations have a hierarchical church governance system creates a presumption that any two Christian churches that do not fall under some common organizational umbrella are not part of the same denomination. This problem does not arise in other religions, in which there is little or no organizational hierarchy whatsoever and therefore any organization adhering to the principles of the religion is assumed to be part of the same denomination.
