What Should be Included in an NIW (National Interest Waiver) Reference/Recommendation Letter?

What Should be Included in an NIW (National Interest Waiver) Reference/Recommendation Letter?

What should your NIW (National Interest Waiver) recommendation/reference letter contain? USCIS has never prescribed a format for these letters, so any format is acceptable. Based on our experience filing hundreds of NIW (National Interest Waiver) cases, published AAO decisions, and USCIS memos, however, the elements below are essential to a strong letter.

1. An introduction of the recommender/reference, including their achievements and qualifications to commend on your work.

Devote a paragraph, or at least several sentences, to summarizing the recommender's achievements. List the recommender's name and position, his or her accomplishments in the field of endeavor, and his or her qualifications to comment on your work. Such statements establish the recommender's authority to assess your achievements and make the letter more persuasive.

2. A brief summary about how the NIW (National Interest Waiver) recommender/reference came to know you.

A statement describing how the recommender knows you tells the USCIS officer what your relationship is. When the letter comes from an independent recommender, this section matters even more, because the way the recommender learned of you is further proof of your national or international recognition.

Examples of this type of statement in an NIW (National Interest Waiver) reference letter include:

• "I became aware of [the petitioner] through his outstanding contributions to pharmaceutical science, which have appeared in a leading scientific journal."

• "Because of [the petitioner's] distinguished achievements during his Ph.D. study, I invited him to join my laboratory so that he could apply his deep knowledge and unique expertise in membrane protein structure and function to our studies of ion channel proteins involved in nervous system disorders."

• "Although I am outside [the petitioner's] circle of colleagues and acquaintances, I know his research well because we share an interest in neuronal channel proteins. After reviewing his documents, I invited him to present his seminal work orally to my colleagues and lab members in my department. The research he has performed in recent years impressed me greatly. He has shown unique expertise and exceptional accomplishments in his breakthrough research."

• "I have never worked with [the petitioner] and do not know him personally. My evaluation rests on his outstanding professional contributions to biochemistry/biophysics in my own subdiscipline. I know his research well because of our shared interest in membrane proteins involved in biological energy transduction. Because his papers matter to our field, I have read them all carefully and have cited some of his manuscripts in my own publications."

• "Although I have no personal ties to [the petitioner], I am quite familiar with his research interests, his work, and his scientific expertise. I first learned of [the petitioner's] research at an international conference while he was still a Ph.D. student at Purdue University."

• "I served as an Associate Editor [for] the peer-reviewed journal Crop Science for six years. In 2005 I managed the review of an article by [the petitioner]. Because the article was so unusual, I requested three reviews instead of the usual two. In my view, the article presented pioneering research of the highest quality. All three reviewers believed the manuscript should be published. "

• "I met [the petitioner] in the summer of 2001, when I visited Professor XXX's lab at the University of Pittsburgh. During my 6 weeks there, we worked together on a research project on two-dimensional thermal convection. That is when I noticed his exceptional understanding and broad knowledge of physics, particularly fluid turbulence."

3. Discussion of your research in detail in the NIW (National Interest Waiver) Recommendation/Reference Letter

A strong NIW (National Interest Waiver) recommendation/reference letter discusses your research in depth. As noted above, it should not be full of empty compliments: advocacy in an NIW (National Interest Waiver) case convinces only when it is paired with discussion of your research.

The content of these letters will also appear in your NIW (National Interest Waiver) petition letter. A favorable discussion of your research and accomplishments therefore makes that petition letter more convincing when it quotes the letters. Consider these examples of how the work of an NIW (National Interest Waiver) petitioner may be discussed:

• "[The petitioner] has designed a series of experiments to characterize convection and flow in thin liquid films. He has been an important collaborator on a combined experimental and theoretical project on thin film flows involving myself and professor XXX of the Technion in Israel. Overall, his research has been outstanding in both quality and quantity."

• "[The petitioner] has made groundbreaking findings on polymeric nanocarriers, controlled drug delivery systems used to combat breast cancer. His development of several unique strategies has opened new applications for these systems. His research further showed that the system protects healthy human cells against tumor cells, and that certain chemical features of the system let it target tumor cells specifically."

• "[The petitioner's] work focuses on delivering anti-cancer agents through novel designs of polymer carriers. Once hydrated, these polymers can circulate in the blood for up to about 24 hours. Another key advantage is that the linkage can be designed to control where and when tumor cells release the drug. It also allows much higher dose[s] of these anti-cancer drugs: [the petitioner] demonstrated that up to 10 fold of polymer-drug conjugate material could be given to a mouse in a single dose without any toxicity."

• "[The petitioner] has discovered that his drug delivery system has potent chemotherapeutic activity against cutaneous breast carcinoma, melanoma, and leukemia cells. That work is groundbreaking: it offers an entirely new system for anti-cancer intervention and will no doubt prompt fresh thinking about preventive and therapeutic strategies."

• "[The petitioner's] current project, which focuses on BK channels, provides intriguing and important insights into how phosphorylation and alternative splicing of these channels regulate neuronal excitability. He has made the surprising discovery that brain BK channels are extensively phosphorylated and alternatively spliced. Such findings matter for understanding the molecular regulation of electrical excitability and are critically useful for developing new therapies for mental and neurological disorders."

• "[The petitioner] has made many valuable contributions to our group's research at Duke. Working with Dr.XXX and Dr.XXX, he has constructed and carried out experiments describing the complex dynamics of liquid mixtures subjected to thermal heating. His laboratory studies were absolutely crucial to validating predictions made by theoretical models."

4. Strong advocacy that sets you apart from others in the same field, the standard of NIW (National Interest Waiver) adjudication, and give specific examples

Expert testimonials about your accomplishments are crucial to an NIW (National Interest Waiver) petition. Keep in mind, however, that they must bolster the argument that you meet the legal standard: that you qualify for a national interest waiver because your research field has intrinsic merit, the benefits of your work are national in scope, and your accomplishments are substantially above those of others in the same field. Evidence that merely establishes competence, or that fails to set you apart from others in the field, carries little weight and may even be used to deny the petition.

If the recommender has personally relied on the alien beneficiary's work to advance their own, the letter should discuss in detail how that influence came about. If the recommender knows the alien's reputation or the extent of the alien's impact in the field, the letter should give specific examples.

The examples below serve that purpose well in an NIW (National Interest Waiver) case:

• "[The petitioner's] work establishes an excellent method for deprotecting the N-Boc group, a methodology useful in synthesizing many biologically active compounds and peptides. Finding a useful new method in organic chemistry is a significant achievement."

• "[The petitioner] is an outstanding and exceptionally skilled scientist whose groundbreaking research work is vital to our country's biomedical research efforts and to improving public health nationwide. His accomplishments to date have far exceeded those of the vast majority of his peers, as shown by his productive publications in premier scientific journals and the frequent citation of his work by other researchers...."

• "[The petitioner] has earned great distinction and has made many breakthroughs in his elegant research."

• "As a young scientist, [the petitioner] has achieved spectacular accomplishments in membrane protein structure and function research."

• "[The petitioner's] manuscript was the first and most important paper in this line of research in Crop Science, and it contributes significantly to the study of agriculturally important traits."

• "[The petitioner] made significant scientific contributions to two-dimensional turbulence, where new non-invasive techniques with great potential for future research were implemented. Important results were also obtained by [the petitioner] in polymer-turbulence interactions, where polymer stretching drastically affects turbulence quenching. He also obtained new, important and unexpected results regarding the exponential tail for the decaying two-dimensional turbulence. These results shed a new light on the physics of the final stage of a vortex liquid."

• "During [the petitioner's] PhD studies, he made outstanding contributions. He was the first in the world to use soap film to study two-dimensional thermal turbulence. He reported new series of data on velocity distributions that challenged theorists. He discovered the coexistence of Boganio and Kolmogorov scaling laws and, for the first time in the world, performed simultaneous measurements of thermal and mechanical powers in a turbulent system. . . ."

• "His work was very significant because he developed new experimental pathways for studying two-dimensional turbulence in complex situations, a phenomenon particularly relevant to the evolution of the climate. His work will provide extremely valuable guidance for developing complex numerical codes aimed at modeling the climate."

5. Substantive information should be Included in the NIW (National Interest Waiver) Reference Letter

A strong NIW (National Interest Waiver) recommendation/reference letter demonstrates the applicant's high level of unique expertise by giving specific examples. AAO decisions on NIW (National Interest Waiver) hold that USCIS will treat a recommender's words as groundless when no specific examples are given.

If an employer or professor of the applicant writes the NIW (National Interest Waiver) recommendation/reference letter, it should specify the work the foreign national is responsible for and the job requirements. Although an NIW (National Interest Waiver) petition does not require a job offer, an employer's letter may cite such a position to show that very few individuals can fill it (i.e., only top individuals in the field or those with exceptional ability can perform the required duties) and that the alien applicant is one of those few.

As noted above, a good NIW (National Interest Waiver) reference letter avoids empty compliments and includes substantial information to back them up. Letters that briefly discuss the alien beneficiary's activities and call him or her knowledgeable, yet lack specifics on how those contributions significantly and consistently influenced the field, are insufficient.

The following are good examples of substantive information in NIW (National Interest Waiver) reference letters:

• "[The petitioner] submitted printouts from citation databases and copies of citing articles and book chapters, establishing 73 citations of his work. About 90% of these are independent citations rather than self-citations by the petitioner or his co-authors."

• "[The petitioner's] research has been well received and praised in membrane structure and function and in membrane bioenergetics, as shown by more than 100 citations of his papers by other researchers in these fields."

• "[The petitioner] has made a highly distinctive and invaluable contribution to a research field vital to human health and to the development of sustainable and renewable energy resources."

• "[Surely, the remarkable number of times (100) his publications have been cited by other scientists in recent years reinforces my opinion that [the petitioner] is a prominent young scientist of extraordinary scientific ability and outstanding accomplishments."

• "[The petitioner] joined my research group in September, 2006. From 12 highly qualified applicants I hand-selected him for his impressive educational and research background and his skills in traditional plant breeding, molecular biology, and statistics. "

• "[The petitioner] is a key scientist in my corn breeding and genetics laboratory. He is responsible for discovering drought and heat tolerance genes, identifying new physiological traits that contribute to drought tolerance, and developing molecular breeding tools to improve stress tolerance genetically. Completing this project would contribute significantly to crop production in water-stressed environments."

• "[The petitioner] played a critical role in my research projects. During his time in my laboratory he published four peer-reviewed papers and has already submitted a paper from his post-doctoral research for publication. His papers attracted international interest, and I am confident these results will be cited worldwide in the coming years. [The petitioner] discovered quantitative trait loci [QTL] for soybean resistance to soybean cyst nematode (SCN), the first major soybean pest. His discoveries improved our understanding of how to develop SCN-resistant cultivars."

• "Although I do not know [the petitioner] personally, I am familiar with his research, which lies in a field closely related to my own. Only a relatively small number of researchers work in thermal convection specifically. Their papers are therefore cited by few people, and large numbers of citations should not be expected. A relatively small number of citations does not imply that the work is unimportant; the real contributions to scientific knowledge must be measured by other means."

This introduction to reference letter drafting is meant to give anyone seeking or filing an NIW (National Interest Waiver) petition a general idea of the NIW reference letter. If you need help drafting a recommendation letter, please contact us. We specialize in NIW (National Interest Waiver) petitions and provide comprehensive, high-quality service on NIW (National Interest Waiver) applications.

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