In this R1 for a music student case, our client was in the US on an F1 student visa studying music. She was about to finish her studies and wanted to remain in the United States, but didn’t get elected in the H-1B lottery. She was an active member of her church in the US and realized that an R1 visa may be a possibility for her to remain in the US while serving her church. That is when she first came to us at Tsang & Associates.
BACKGROUND OF THIS R1 FOR A MUSIC STUDENT CASE
We have done many R1 visa cases, and in many of the cases there are challenges because the church doesn’t have the right paperwork or the applicant organization is not a church, there have even been cases where the applicant organization closed and the R1 visa beneficiary needed to find new employment. In this case, we didn’t have all of these challenges. We had an applicant that was a church and a music student in the US on an F1 student visa that was to serve as the worship director at the church, pending approval of her R1 visa.
CHALLENGES IN THIS CASE
The top challenge in this case was proving the responsibilities of a worship director and how our client was qualified for this position. She wasn’t a pastor and she hadn’t gone through religious training. Her formal education was in music. That made this case different from a more typical R1 visa for a pastor with religious training.
Another challenge here was that the applicant congregation was small. They didn’t have many employees where this would be considered more normal to hire someone to lead worship or perhaps have several worship leaders. So we needed to explain this and make it easy to see why this student was to be hired for her skills, her faith, and why it made sense for the church to apply for this R1 visa for a music student.
KEYS TO SUCCESS IN THIS R1 FOR A MUSIC STUDENT
Explaining the Qualifications of the Position
Part of the R1 visa is that you have the knowledge, skills, and background that qualify you for this job that you are about to do. Normally, an R1 beneficiary may have years of theological study or have been serving as a pastor for a long time in their home country, but for this client, she was a student and hadn’t previously completed religious studies. So we needed to demonstrate why she qualified for this position as worship director. We connected why the church needed the position and what she’d be doing with the fact that she’d already sort of been doing it. We collected her resume, employment verification letters, sample work messages, and her worship sets that she’d already prepared. We documented everything, we explained it well and we included all of this evidence in the application to fully explain the position and her qualifications.
Documenting Two Years of Membership
Part of the R1 visa requirements is that the beneficiary must be a member for a minimum of two years before filing.
“Evidence that the religious worker is a member of a religious denomination having a bona fide non-profit religious organization in the United States for at least two years immediately before filing Form I-129” [Source: USCIS]
It’s important to include this information when submitting the R1 petition, but many people ask “How do you prove you are a faithful member of this religion?”
Often it comes down to other pastors’ recommendation letters. Getting this confirmation from the people who know you, the people who walked this journey with you, the people you worship with and do Bible studies with. These are the people who have seen your faith grow and there’s no better proof than that. So we collected all of this information and documented it well.
Providing Details of the Church’s Nonprofit Status
Proving the organization’s non-profit status is paramount in any R1 case. In this R1 for a music student, we spent a full page talking about the church’s non-profit status. We included 8 different documents to prove this status. To make it even easier, we know there is a mandatory inspection, or visit, to the organization in any R1 case, so we added the church’s schedule directly in the case documents.
We know that a visit will need to happen, so we made it really easy to find when the church is open. When the visit could take place to make sure the schedule wasn’t a reason for any delay of the visa processing and approval.
There are several other R1 visa requirements to meet, but after these main points in this case, gathering everything else was just a matter of logistics. Once we had everything, we made sure that the whole story was clear and there was evidence to support the full story for this applicant.
R1 FOR A MUSIC STUDENT CASE RESULT
In the end, the R1 for this music student was approved. Our client was able to stay in the United States after finishing her studies and continue worshiping and helping others to worship at her church. She was thrilled and our team was thrilled to have been able to help her move from an F1 visa to an R1 visa.
LAWYER COMMENTS ON THIS R1 VISA CASE
Many people think the forms for your visa application are just a form. It’s just there because it needs to be, but it doesn’t add anything to my case. Really the forms may be one of, if not the most, important documents in the application, because the form is what will be filed for your case. All the other documents submitted may not get saved. So you really want to make sure to provide all the details on your form rather than just adding a few words and considering it done.
If you need assistance with an R1 visa, you can learn more about our R-1 legal services or contact us with any questions. We would love to help.