A Brazilian pastor and his family made the difficult decision to voluntarily leave the United States after five years of service at the First Baptist Church of Gordon, Texas.

Their departure came after discovering that the process for obtaining an EB-4 visa, a path to permanent residency, had stalled due to a backlog of applications.

Albert Oliveira, his wife Caroline, and their three-year-old son left for Brazil a week after their last Sunday service, according to CBS Texas. More than 200 parishioners came to say goodbye.

What is the EB-4 visa that the Brazilian immigrant had applied for in the US?

The pastor was legally living in the United States thanks to an R-1 visa, intended for temporary religious workers.

According to Newsweek, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is facing a record backlog of 11.3 million pending applications, which prevented his change of status from being resolved before the expiration of his current permit.

On its website, USCIS details that the EB-4 visa that the Brazilian pastor applied for is a fourth preference based on employment, intended for immigrants who wish to live and work permanently in the United States.

Religious workers are among the immigrants who could qualify for this visa. This also applies to media representatives, members of the Armed Forces, Panama Canal employees, employees of international organizations, and certain licensed physicians, among others. “Honestly, it feels like a defeat,” Alberto Oliveira confessed to CBS Texas. “We've been fighting for this for two years, and now we're going home.” The decision to self-deport was intended to prevent his family from becoming undocumented. “I feel loved, but I also feel disappointed in the people in power,” the pastor added.

The pastor had requested an expedited review of his case

Oliveira first arrived in the United States in 2011 on a student visa. Years later, I married Caroline Schuster Oliveira,a German national, and settled in the small town of Gordon, Texas, where he became a youth minister.

For the past three years, he had served as senior pastor. Wayne Wroblski, the church's worship leader, mourned his passing. "It doesn't seem fair. He has met all the requirements, he has submitted all the applications on time since he has been here," he told the same media outlet.

Republican Congressman Roger Williams, Gordon's representative, acknowledged the pastor's efforts and explained that, despite requesting an expedited review of his case, “due to high demand and limited visa availability, the request was denied.”

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