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As immigration-reform efforts in Washington, D.C., have crumbled, Texas Baptists announced in June a new plan to help legal immigrants become citizens.

The Immigration Service and Aid Center (ISAAC) is the first initiative to help churches across the country that want to host government-accredited assistance programs, according to organizers with the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) and Buckner International Ministries.

ISAAC stems from a five-year investigation, said Suzii Paynter, director of the BGCT’s Christian Life Commission. Her group discovered numerous examples of unscrupulous attorneys who promised help with navigating the citizenship process but never delivered.

“The average person seeking help is uninformed and living in fear,” said Albert Reyes, president of Buckner Children and Family Services. “They’re served by people pretending to be their friend.”

ISAAC focuses on helping church leaders find the training they need to make their churches accredited with the government to become immigration centers. ISAAC may also provide scholarships to church leaders who want to attend training classes. A BGCT agency that preceded ISAAC helped seven Texas churches move toward accreditation, and program leaders saw the need for a nationwide program when they fielded questions from churches in other states. ISAAC has largely dodged criticism because the program aids only qualified, legal applicants seeking citizenship.

“Most people are conflicted about immigration,” Paynter said. “I don’t want people taking advantage of my country. But there are people who could be helped if the system worked better.”

Reyes said ISAAC will focus on convening training workshops, leaving other nonprofits and churches responsible for funding the immigration centers. Those costs can range from $5,000 to $15,000 for an in-house facility to $80,000 for churches opting for a separate organization and staff, according to ISAAC’s Richard Munoz.

The costs may prove to be prohibitive for small churches without outside funding. But Texas’s first Baptist-run center provides a model. In the last 18 years, Alex Comacho’s Dallas-area church has helped about 3,500 immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Africa, and elsewhere obtain citizenship. Those numbers include 600 during the first half of 2007, a surge sparked by the controversy over illegal immigration and rising application costs. Yet fewer than 100 people attend Iglesia Bautista Cristiania each week. Comacho started doing immigration work while in college, and he eventually obtained a law degree in immigration that qualified him to practice in federal court.

Conservative leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have long been at odds with the BGCT. But Richard Land, president of the sbc’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, applauds the ISAAC initiative to help churches.

“This sounds as if what they’re doing is providing guidance, counseling, and resources to enable people to make their way through the maze of the immigration process, which is pretty difficult,” Land said. “It’s a patchwork of conflicting regulations and statutes.”