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Step by Step Introduction for a Good NIW (National Interest Waiver) Recommendation Letter

by Liu & Associates, P.C. 08/01/2011

A recommendation letter is also called a reference letter, support letter, or testimonial letter. Strong testimonial letters are key to a successful NIW (National Interest Waiver) case. Good recommendation letters do more than strengthen the petitioner’s credentials in filing an NIW (National Interest Waiver) case: they can compensate for a lack of substantial publications and citations.

Our firm recognizes the significant role recommendation letters play in obtaining approval of an NIW (National Interest Waiver) case, so we draft them for our clients individually at no extra charge. Writing a good recommendation letter requires a solid understanding of immigration law and USCIS regulations, which templates cannot replace.

For those considering or preparing their own NIW petitions, or working with law firms that do not offer recommendation letter drafting, we hope these tips prove useful.

What you Should Avoid in your Recommendation/reference Letters

1. Substantially Similar NIW (National Interest Waiver) Reference Letters:

Although it is almost universal practice for petitioners or their lawyers to draft NIW (National Interest Waiver) reference letters for recommenders to review and sign, USCIS adjudicators expect the opposite. If the letters you drafted are substantially similar, your NIW (National Interest Waiver) petition faces a serious problem. In some AAO decisions on NIW (National Interest Waiver) petitions, such letters are regarded as suspicious and their merits are significantly discounted.

Try your best, therefore, to make the letters look different, using basic variations such as a different font or format, or more advanced techniques such as different writing styles, sentence structures, tones, and approaches to advocacy. Remember to have someone proofread for you; the worst scenario is the same grammatical error appearing in all the recommendation letters.

2. Many Average Quality NIW (National Interest Waiver) Recommendation/Reference Letters

Remember that an NIW (National Interest Waiver) petition is not a competition to collect the most recommendation letters. USCIS adjudicators have limited time for each case, and too many average-quality letters can lead to an RFE or even rejection of your NIW (National Interest Waiver) case simply because the adjudicator has no time to find its merits. Focus on the strength of each letter rather than the number you can gather.

3. Avoid Empty Compliments in the NIW (National Interest Waiver) Reference Letter

Every comment about the NIW (National Interest Waiver) petitioner in a reference letter must be supported by objective evidence or specific examples. Simply reiterating the standard of law on NIW (National Interest Waiver) or laying out empty compliments will not improve your chance of approval; it will only make USCIS officers doubt the merits of your NIW (National Interest Waiver) case.

What You Should Include in your NIW (National Interest Waiver) Reference Letter

So what exactly should your NIW (National Interest Waiver) recommendation letter include? The USCIS has never laid out a required format, so a reference letter may take any form. Based on our firm’s experience, AAO released cases, and USCIS memos, however, the following statements are essential in a good NIW (National Interest Waiver) recommendation letter.

1. An introduction of the recommender/referrer of your NIW (National Interest Waiver) petition, including their achievements and qualifications to commend on your work

A paragraph, or at least several sentences, of the NIW (National Interest Waiver) reference letter should summarize the recommender. List the recommender’s name, position, accomplishments in the field of endeavor, and qualifications to comment on your work.

2. A brief summary about how the NIW (National Interest Waiver) referrer came to know you:

A statement about how the referrer knows you gives the USCIS officer a sense of your relationship with the recommender. If the reference letter comes from an independent recommender, this part matters even more, because the way the referrer knows about you is further proof of your international or national recognition.

Below are some examples of this kind of statement in an NIW (National Interest Waiver) reference letter:

  • "I became aware of [the petitioner] through his impressive contributions to pharmaceutical science, which appeared in a leading scientific journal."
  • "Given [the petitioner’s] distinguished achievements during his Ph.D. studies, 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."
  • "Though I am not within [the petitioner’s] circle of colleagues or acquaintances, I know [the petitioner’s] research well because of our shared interest in neuronal channel proteins. I reviewed his documents and invited him to present his seminal research orally to my colleagues and lab members in my department. The work he has performed over the past few years impressed me greatly. He has shown unique expertise and exceptional accomplishments in his breakthrough research."
  • "I have never worked with [the petitioner], and in fact I do not know him personally. My evaluation rests on his outstanding professional contributions to the field of biochemistry/biophysics in the subdiscipline I have specialized in. I am well acquainted with his research through our joint interest in membrane proteins involved in biological energy transducing processes. I have read all his research papers carefully because of their importance to our research field, and I have cited some of his manuscripts in my own publications."
  • "Though I have no personal ties to [the petitioner], I am quite familiar with his research interests, his work, and his scientific expertise. I first became acquainted with [the petitioner’s] research at an international conference while he was still a Ph.D. student at Purdue University."
  • "For six years I served as an associate editor for the peer-reviewed journal Crop Science. During 2005 I managed the review of an article by [the petitioner]. Because the article was so unusual, I requested three reviews rather than the typical two. In my view, the article presented pioneering research of the highest quality, and all three reviewers agreed 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. Over my 6 weeks of stay there, [the petitioner] and I worked together on the research project of two-dimensional thermal convection. That is when I noticed his special understanding and broad knowledge in physics, especially in the area of fluid turbulence."

3. Discussion of Your Research in the NIW (National Interest Waiver) Reference Letter

A good NIW (National Interest Waiver) recommendation letter should discuss your research. As discussed above, it should not be full of empty compliments; advocacy in an NIW (National Interest Waiver) case is convincing only when accompanied by discussion of your research.

The content of recommendation letters will also be used 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 good examples of detailed discussion of an NIW (National Interest Waiver) petitioner’s work:

  • "[The petitioner] has devised a series of experiments to characterize the nature of convection and flow in thin liquid films. He has been an important collaborator in a combined experimental and theoretical project on thin film flows that involves me and professor XXX of the Technion in Israel. Taken as a whole, his research is outstanding in both quality and quantity."
  • "[The petitioner] has made groundbreaking findings on polymeric nanocarriers, a controlled drug delivery system used to combat breast cancer. The several unique strategies he developed have led to new applications in controlled drug delivery systems. His research further demonstrated that his system effectively protects healthy human cells against tumor cells, and that certain chemical features of his drug delivery system can specifically target tumor cells."
  • "[The petitioner’s] work centers 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 of this polymer is that the linkage can be designed to control where and when tumor cells release the drug, which also permits much higher dose[s] of these anti-cancer drugs. [The petitioner] had 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. The work is ground breaking because it offers a completely new system for anti-cancer intervention, and it will no doubt lead to new considerations for preventive and therapeutic strategies."
  • "[The petitioner’s] current project, focusing on BK channels, has yielded intriguing and important insights into how phosphorylation and alternative splicing of BK channels regulate the excitability of neurons. He has made the surprising discovery that brain BK channels are extensively phosphorylated and alternatively spliced. Such findings matter for understanding the fundamental mechanisms behind the molecular regulation of electrical excitability, and they are also critically helpful for developing novel therapeutic approaches to mental and neurological disorders."
  • "[The petitioner] has contributed a great deal of value to our group’s research at Duke. Working with Dr.XXX and Dr.XXX, [the petitioner] has constructed and carried out experiments describing the complex dynamics of liquid mixtures subjected to thermal heating. [The petitioner’s] laboratory studies were absolutely crucial to validating the 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

Expert testimonials about your accomplishments are crucial to your NIW (National Interest Waiver) petition, but they must bolster the argument that you meet the standard set by law on NIW (National Interest Waiver): that you qualify for a national interest waiver because your field of research has intrinsic merit 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, does not support your NIW (National Interest Waiver) case; it carries little weight and may actually be used to deny the petition. The following examples serve well the purpose of setting you apart from others in your 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. To date his accomplishments have far exceeded those of the vast majority of his peers, as evidenced by his productive publications in premier scientific journals and the frequent citations of his works by other researchers...."
  • "[The petitioner] has won great distinction and has made many breakthroughs in his elegant research."
  • "As a young scientist, [the petitioner] has achieved spectacular accomplishments in research on membrane protein structure and function."
  • "[The petitioner’s] manuscript was the first and most important paper of its kind in Crop Science, and it makes significant contributions to studies of traits of agricultural importance."
  • "[The petitioner] made significant scientific contributions to the field of two-dimensional turbulence, where new non-invasive techniques were implemented with a great potential for future research. Important results were also obtained by [the petitioner] in the field of polymer-turbulence interactions, where polymer stretching imparts a drastic effect on quenching turbulence. He also obtained new, important and unexpected results on the exponential tail for 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 investigate 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 was the first in the world to perform 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 of particular relevance in the evolution of the climate. His work will provide extremely valuable guidance for building complex numerical codes that aim at modeling the climate."

5. Substantive Information Should be Included in the NIW (National Interest Waiver) Reference Letter

A good NIW (National Interest Waiver) recommendation letter should point out the high level of unique expertise the applicant possesses through specific examples. In NIW (National Interest Waiver) cases, the AAO has pointed out that the USCIS will regard a recommender’s words as groundless when no specific examples are given.

A NIW (National Interest Waiver) recommendation letter from an employer or professor of the applicant should specify the work the foreign national is responsible for and the requirements of the job. Although a job offer is not required for priority workers, a recommendation letter from an employer may cite such a position to establish that very few individuals can fill the offered position (that is, only top individuals in the field or those with exceptional ability can perform the duties the position requires) and that the petitioner is one of those few.

As discussed above, a good NIW (National Interest Waiver) reference letter avoids empty compliments and includes substantial information backing them up. Recommendation letters that briefly discuss the petitioner’s activities and describe him or her as a knowledgeable individual, but lack specific information about how the petitioner’s contributions significantly and consistently influenced the field, are insufficient.

For example, to establish a foreign national’s exceptional ability for NIW (National Interest Waiver) purposes, the recommender must pay close attention to the criteria specified in the regulations and may cite the types of evidence listed there. A mere citation to public policy is not a substitute for documentation of extraordinary ability. The government has also made clear that merely submitting types of documentation from the categories listed in the regulations is insufficient; the evidence must ultimately establish that the beneficiary is qualified for an NIW (National Interest Waiver). Let us look at some good examples of substantive information provided in NIW (National Interest Waiver) reference letters:

  • "[The petitioner] submitted printouts from citation databases and copies of the citing articles and book chapters, establishing 73 citations of his work. About 90% of these citations are independent rather than self-citations by the petitioner or his co-authors."
  • "[The petitioner’s] research has been well received and lauded in the fields of membrane structure and function and 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 of vital importance to human health and to the development of sustainable, renewable energy resources."
  • "[Surely, the extraordinary number of times (100) other scientists have cited his publications in the last few years reinforces my personal opinion that [the petitioner] is a prominent young scientist of extraordinary scientific capabilities and outstanding accomplishments."
  • "[The petitioner] joined my research group in September, 2006. I selected him by hand from 12 highly qualified applicants because of his impressive and strong 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 for the genetic improvement of stress tolerance. Completing this project would contribute significantly to crop production under water stressed environments."
  • "[The petitioner] played a critical role in my research projects. During his time in my laboratory, he published a total of four peer-reviewed papers and has already submitted a paper for publication from his post-doctoral research. [The petitioner’s] papers attracted international interest. I am sure that these results will become cited worldwide in the next few years. [The petitioner] discovered quantitative trait loci [QTL] for soybean resistance to soybean cyst nematode (SCN), the first major pest in soybean. His discoveries enhanced our understanding of how to develop SCN-resistant cultivars."
  • "Although I do not know [the petitioner] personally, I am familiar with his research since he worked in a field closely related to my own. Only a relatively small number of researchers work in the specific area of thermal convection. Their papers are therefore cited by only a small number of people, and large numbers of citations should not be expected. A relatively small number of citations does not in any way imply a low level of importance of the work, and the real contributions to scientific knowledge must be measured by other means."

This step-by-step introduction to drafting reference letters is intended to give people seeking or filing an NIW (National Interest Waiver) petition a general idea of the NIW reference letter. If you need assistance drafting a recommendation letter, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are experts on NIW (National Interest Waiver) petitions and provide the most comprehensive and guaranteed service on NIW (National Interest Waiver) applications.

About NIW (National Interest Waiver) Recommendation Letter

Strong reference letters are key to a successful NIW case. Our firm has seen how much reference letters contribute to an NIW approval, so we draft them for each client individually at no additional charge. Writing an effective reference letter requires a firm grasp of immigration law and USCIS regulations, which no template can replace.

Filing an NIW petition is a significant step and should not be taken lightly. Do not file an NIW petition just to "give it a shot." With processing times currently prolonged, a careless filing will substantially delay your green card. Moreover, although the law does not preclude repeated filing in the same category, if you file another NIW petition after a denial without a significant improvement in your credentials, your case will very likely be denied again.