- Five foreign-born priests in eastern Idaho may be forced to leave by June 2026 due to immigration law changes and visa processing delays, threatening regular access to Sunday Mass for thousands of Catholics.
- The 79 priests of the Diocese of Boise, Idaho’s only diocese, serve over 280,000 parishioners. Twenty-two percent of the priests are foreign-born. In eastern Idaho, five of the area’s 11 priests are foreign-born.
- A 2023 immigration backlog has left many religious workers waiting years for green cards; if R-1 visas expire, they must leave the U.S. for a year before reapplying.
- The Religious Workforce Protection Act, a bipartisan bill, aims to extend religious worker visas, but has seen little progress, especially due to the ongoing government shutdown. Father Francisco Flores, an Idaho pastor, has urged parishioners to contact lawmakers to support the legislation and pray for a resolution to the priests’ situation.
Five foreign-born priests ministering in eastern Idaho may soon be forced to leave the state due to changes in immigration law, potentially leaving thousands of Catholics without spiritual resources.
According to EastIdahoNews.com, the Diocese of Boise — Idaho’s sole diocese — said that the diocese currently has 79 priests and roughly one in five are foreign-born. The diocese serves more than 280,000 parishioners and has welcomed 100,000 new parishioners in the past four years. Each priest has enormous numbers of parishioners to serve, ranging up to 3,000.
Priests in the diocese travel across the state to provide the sacraments, manage schools, and provide spiritual resources. Eastern Idaho has 11 priests, five of whom are from other countries. In a letter to parishioners, Father Francisco Flores, pastor of Pope Saint John Paul II Catholic Parish in Idaho Falls, said that the five priests will have to leave the country by June 2026 if the immigration law is not changed. The sudden shortage of priests could potentially leave Catholics without regular access to Sunday Mass, he wrote.
As CatholicVote previously reported, due to a massive backlog created by a Biden-era change to immigration processing in 2023, religious workers across the U.S. are struggling to obtain green cards or more permanent visas before their five-year R-1 visas expire.
Religious workers can be forced to wait for their green cards anywhere from one year to more than a decade. If their visas expire, they must leave the U.S. and return to their home countries for one year before applying again for the R-1 visa, CatholicVote reported.
To address the problem, the bipartisan Religious Workforce Protection Act was introduced earlier this year to extend religious worker visas past five years in certain instances, giving the workers renewable three-year visas until their green card applications have been processed.
In his letter, Fr. Flores said that the legislation has not received much attention from lawmakers. He urged parishioners to write to politicians, including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Idaho congressmen, to address the issue. The ongoing government shutdown is making the priests’ situation worse, he told EastIdahoNews.com.
Fr. Flores also called on the parishioners to pray for a resolution to the priests’ situation, saying that “writing is not enough.”
“Along with prayer we must also remember to be faithful. We cannot turn to God only when we are in need,” he concluded. “We must also live as His children and members of His Church allowing Him to bring goodness into the world through us.”
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