The Senate passed a bill Thursday to make permanent a program that allows churches to bring religious workers and instructors to the United States from abroad.
That affects about 2,500 missionaries, translators and others brought each year to the United States by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said LaMar Sleight, director of its international and governmental affairs office in Washington.A similar bill is still hung up in the House, however, where members are fighting whether to require that such workers be members of their churches for two or five years before being able to acquire such visas.
Those requirements are designed to ensure that people do not join churches just to more easily enter the United States.
That visa program - which allows lay preachers, nuns, missionaries and other religious workers into the United States - will expire at the end of the month unless Congress extends it.
The Senate version of the bill was pushed by Sens. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich.; Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.
Hatch added an amendment to that bill Thursday to do away with Immigration and Naturalization fees for such immigrants who come to do charity work - and named it the Mother Teresa Fee Waiver Act.
"Shortly before her death, Mother Teresa personally sought a waiver of the fees charged to her missionaries seeking to enter this country on a temporary basis to help the poorest of the poor and sickest of the sick," Hatch said.
"We should give thanks to these kind and giving persons who travel to foreign lands for no other purpose than to give of themselves. . . . Instead, we've been charging them."
Hatch added, "This bill is a small but fitting and timely tribute to Mother Teresa who stood under 5 feet (tall) but whose goodness and righteousness made her tower among us."