Ara Torosyan Calls for Legal Pathway for Christian Refugees in America

Ara Torosyan, an Iranian-American priest, has called for establishing a legal pathway to accept Christian refugees in the United States.

Ara Torosyan, an Iranian-American priest in California who was detained in 2010 for distributing Persian Bibles in Iran and subsequently sought asylum in America, currently leads Cornerstone Church in Los Angeles. In recent days, he has reacted to the detention of members of his church who were refugees.

Following the arrest of several citizens from his church congregation who are Iranian refugees, Priest Ara, on Thursday, July 3rd, corresponding to Tir 12th in the Iranian calendar, spoke with the charitable organization “World Aid” in which he supported his church members while calling for opening a legal pathway to accept Christians who have sought asylum in America, and announced “open the doors to refugees.”

Priest Torosyan’s remarks came in response to the detention of his church members by officers from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, all of whom are refugees. Priest Ara released a video showing the detention of one of the couples from this church. The video shows a woman named Marjan who suffered a nervous breakdown due to the detention of her husband, Reza, by immigration officers.

Priest Torosyan strongly emphasized that some Persian-language media outlets, in broadcasting this video, had attributed their arrests to illegal immigrant violations, whereas according to his statements, the members of this church had committed no violations whatsoever and had abided by the law.

He also added that when filming the detention scene, painful memories of his own arrest in Iran came back to him and deeply affected him. Priest Ara added: “Our church had examined the ‘Welcome Corps’ program for months hoping that Iranian Christian refugees could enter America through this pathway, but ultimately they informed us that we will no longer accept any Iranians.”

He referred to his own refugee status, having entered America through the “Lautenberg” program. He expressed regret over the suspension of this program and urged the U.S. government to introduce another legal pathway for Iranian refugees to enter the country.

The “Welcome Corps” program helped with the direct resettlement of refugees, which the U.S. government had announced in the past three years that American citizens could resettle refugees through this program. This program was designed with the aim of reducing government costs and increasing refugee acceptance.

According to this program, groups of citizens were required to raise at least $2,275 per refugee to cover the first three months of living expenses for the refugees. Priest Torosyan said in this regard that unfortunately Iranian refugees are now deprived of this opportunity.

He also added: “There is no other way left except to come to the border and wait for legal processing, which is what our church members did. I ask them to open a pathway, a legal pathway but accompanied by mercy and humanity.”