Column authors urge restoring centers for Iran’s minorities — The Hill
In the United States, the authors of a column in The Hill called on Congress to reauthorize the Lautenberg Amendment by September 30 and on the administration of President Donald Trump to restore funding and operations for application processing centers. In their view, the closure of such a center in Vienna effectively halted the assistance mechanism for Iran’s religious minorities seeking to move to the United States.
Program for religious minorities
The Lautenberg-Specter program was launched in 1990 to help persecuted Jews and Christians from the Soviet Union reunite with their families in the United States. In 2004, it was extended to religious minorities from Iran. As the authors note, Congress has since renewed the program on a bipartisan basis.
To participate in the program, applicants from Iran needed support from a relative or friend in the United States. Due to the absence of a U.S. embassy in Iran, candidates who advanced to the next stage traveled to Austria. The Resettlement Support Center in Vienna accepted applications, prepared documents, arranged interviews with U.S. officials and medical examinations, and assisted with arranging further resettlement. U.S. law enforcement agencies simultaneously conducted security screenings.
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People in the processing pipeline
According to the columnists, more than 33,000 members of Iran’s religious minorities, including Jews, Christians, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and Sabean-Mandaeans, went through this system between 2001 and 2025. After the State Department terminated the grant for the Vienna center, which had been run for more than 25 years in partnership with the government by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, more than 14,000 Iranians remained in the processing pipeline.
The authors write that after the center’s closure, the organization lost access to government data needed to track individual cases. They also claim that since the start of the war with Israel, Iranian authorities have arrested more than 20,000 people, including members of the Baha’i, Christian, and Jewish communities. In the columnists’ view, restoring the centers would be consistent with the Trump administration’s stated policy of combating antisemitism.
