Last year a friend of mine married a woman from Brazil and, of course, he wanted to help her get her green card. I had gotten to know and like her and my friend asked me if I would write a letter, and get it notarized, to vouch for her as basically a good person and theirs as a good marriage. That certainly fit my perceptions of the case and so I was happy to do it.
Here’s the bulk of the letter, with certain parts Xed out or Yed out to keep their identities private:
I am writing regarding X, who is married to one of my best friends, Y. Y and I have been friends since September 1979, one month after I moved from the University of Rochester, where I was on the faculty, to the Cato Institute in San Francisco, where I was a senior policy analyst. In the last 15 years, Y and I have spoken regularly and I have never seen him as happy as he is in this marriage. I could see it when I attended their wedding reception last April, and it has continued. From everything I know, I can vouch for her good character.
My own background, in case it’s relevant, is that I moved from Canada to the United States to get my Ph.D. in economics at UCLA and in 1977 became a permanent resident. In 1986, I became a U.S. citizen. I was a senior economist with President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984. From 1984 to 2017, I was an economics professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. I retired in 2017. From 1990 until the present, I have been a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. I am still active in writing articles for major publications such as the Wall Street Journal, which has published over 40 of my pieces since the mid-1980s.
Y called me last week to tell me what the immigration hearing officer’s reaction had been. He looked at the letter, with Y and X and X’s lawyer present, and said, “Naval Postgraduate School. Wow! That’s a good school.” Then he said how impressed he was with the Council of Economic Advisers part. Y’s impression was that my letter cinched the deal. (I hasten to add that it probably would have been cinched anyway, but my letter made it much easier.)
I told Y that that was very heartening. I told him that back in 1980, after Reagan was elected and I expressed to my Hoover friend Robert Hessen my desire to be a senior economist with Reagan’s CEA, Bob encouraged me to follow up, which I did by calling Murray Weidenbaum the same day his appointment as chairman had been announced. I still remember what Bob said: “Even if you don’t love the job, it will be a great line on your resume the rest of your life and will make some things easier to get.” He was right, and helping my friend’s wife get her green card is only the most recent payoff.
By the way, X loves the U.S. of A.
READER COMMENTS
Philo
Feb 10 2020 at 10:14pm
One would expect X to love the US, considering the contrast with Brazil. We may be disappointed in the functioning of the US government, but we should never forget how much worse things could be.
Matthias Görgens
Feb 10 2020 at 10:20pm
And a country is so much more than just her government.
Thaomas
Feb 11 2020 at 10:47am
Probably almost all immigrants love the USA more than long time residents. They tend to have more traditional outlooks toward family and hard work and do not take our liberal democracy for granted.
Phil H
Feb 10 2020 at 10:22pm
This is a nice story, but it makes me wonder about those who don’t have friends with political jobs in their background to help them. This is a version of patronage, where a person with more money/status helps those with less; that’s something that makes the leftie in me fundamentally uncomfortable. I see it as the first step on the road toward corruption. Perhaps that’s wrong, but I really struggle to see where the line would be.
For example, one commonly-expressed pro-market principle is: if it’s fine to do X for free, it’s fine to do X for money. (I don’t entirely accept this, but it’s quite powerful.) If it’s fine for someone to vouch (possible decisively) for a new immigrant for free, is it fine to vouch for them for money?
David Henderson
Feb 10 2020 at 10:48pm
Phil H,
You wrote:
Good point.
You wrote:
Good point. I would hope it would do something else as well: make the leftie in you uncomfortable with your leftism, which presumably includes giving the government a lot of power over people’s lives.
Thaomas
Feb 11 2020 at 10:51am
Huh? Is it “lefties” that want to restrict immigration and make it helpful for someone of high status to vouch for the immigrant?
David Henderson
Feb 11 2020 at 11:10am
You ask:
There’s no “it.” People on all parts of the political spectrum want to restrict immigration. Check out Bernie Sanders’s criticism of immigration back in 2015/16 when he learned that Charles and David Koch favored it.
But I was pointing to something else: what gives former government officials high status is that they were in positions that came about largely due to big government. With a much smaller government, their status wouldn’t be as great and there wouldn’t be as many of them.
Mark Barbieri
Feb 11 2020 at 6:20pm
And without big government, those well connected people wouldn’t have as many favors to give.
Thaomas
Feb 11 2020 at 8:13pm
You made the generalization that “lefties” wanted to give government more power to restrict immigration. You did not say “lefties also” want to exclude immigrants. Bernie Sanders is not enough pox for both houses.
MarkW
Feb 11 2020 at 7:16am
This is a nice story, but it makes me wonder about those who don’t have friends with political jobs in their background to help them.
I don’t. I know a few couples who’ve gone through the ‘regular’ spousal immigration process without connections and without incident. These include an American man married to an Indian-Singaporean woman, an American woman married to a British man, and an American man (my former auto mechanic) who married a Russian woman he met online (and who brought a daughter from a previous marriage with her). Even the last one presented no huge problems that I heard about (and I think I would have heard about them — he’s a talker). The odd part of the process seems to be the separate interviews of each of the couple intended to determine whether it’s a genuine rather than sham marriage (they did have interesting stories of the kinds of questions they were asked).
Phil H
Feb 11 2020 at 11:39am
I’m glad that’s the case. In Britain, things may not be that simple – immigration law seems to be changing continuously, and at the moment, I don’t think I can take my wife (Chinese) back to the UK with me. As I understand it at the moment, if we tried to move to the UK now, she could not get a visitor visa, because we’d be intending to settle (she’s been refused for one on suspicion of such before); and she couldn’t get a settlement visa, because I’d have to show steady income in the UK to demonstrate that I can support her, and I work in a freelance industry (translation). I’d have to be resident for a year or something before they’d consider it.
My situation is relatively rare, and I understand that it’s tough to make rules that work for every possible situation. But it’s not a great position to be in, feeling like we’re at the mercy of the immigration officials. I agree with David H on that point.
Hazel Meade
Feb 13 2020 at 12:22pm
While I do know of people who have successfully navigated the spousal immigration process, I do also know of someone who married a woman from Spain he had fallen in love with on a business trip, who had problems, and ended up moving to Spain to be with her.
I suppose the US immigration officials were skeptical because he’d only known her a few weeks in Spain and then on a subsequent two week trip before deciding to get married. Nevertheless, I’m fairly certain it was a legitimate relationship – he was sort of a shy fellow and he described just having an immediate connection with her, also that she was also quite a shy person herself. Two nerds just clicking over the hotel desk.
David Seltzer
Feb 11 2020 at 5:09pm
This is a version of patronage, where a person with more money/status helps those with less; that’s something that makes the leftie in me fundamentally uncomfortable.
Is a reference letter from a respected source on behalf of an applicant to a future employer or university patronage in a negative way? Is the recipient a ward or votary? Is this sort of “patronage” a political spoils system? From the tenor of the story, David’s actions were freely chosen. I suspect freedom of choice has always been anathema to “lefties”.
Phil H
Feb 12 2020 at 12:06am
I suspect these were supposed to be rhetorical questions, but of course, they all have answers!
“Is a reference letter from a respected source on behalf of an applicant to a future employer or university patronage in a negative way?”
Yes, it certainly can be. Note the recent admissions scandal in American universities.
“Is the recipient a ward or votary?”
Yes! The rise of the unpaid intern is a matter of intense concern. There is a real worry that only those who are wealthy enough to do unpaid summers working for for politicians will go on to get the plum political jobs.
“Is this sort of “patronage” a political spoils system?”
Absolutely can be. Back in the bad old days, think of the trouble that women and non-white people had obtaining such letters. (Perhaps when they weren’t gracious and grateful enough.)
“I suspect freedom of choice has always been anathema to “lefties”.”
I suspect freedom of non-privileged groups has always been anathema to conservatives. Haha, I don’t mind political invective, but you know it flows both ways, right?
David Seltzer
Feb 12 2020 at 1:15pm
Invective? Then you’ve missed the point. It’s an observation supported by empirical evidence.Lefties certainly suborn large government control over the lives of individuals. The government is not my patron and I’m NOT it’s ward in spite of Sanders, Warren, et al. I’ve never asked what my country can do for me or what I can do for my country.
Thaomas
Feb 12 2020 at 8:14pm
In the topic under discussion it’s not “lefties” that are keen on restricting immigration.
Mark Z
Feb 14 2020 at 7:46pm
I’m not sure this is really patronage (at least in the sense with the negative connotations). If David personally knew someone in the decision-making process I think it would be, but inasmuch as a letter from someone of ‘institutional significance’ makes a difference, I’d guess it reflects the belief that people who are or were part of our ‘cherished institutions’ are more reliable on average. The decision-maker – being part of the ‘system’ – likely sees a recommendation from a ‘public servant’ or a law enforcement officer or noted philanthropist or distinguished professor or what have you as a more credible indicator of the subject’s upstanding character than if some less ‘distinguished’ person wrote it. That may be not be true; maybe a factory worker is as good a judge of character and as honest and discriminating in who he vouches for then a person of ‘distinction,’ but I think it is what the public officials who make decisions based on letters believe.
The question of whether one should be allowed to do it for a fee: honestly, I would say sure, why not? Especially if it takes time and effort to do. But that may be moral reasoning in a vacuum. I think many would take it as implied that, if someone has to pay you to write the letter, you’re probably not writing an honest letter. There’s a unavoidable connotation associated with it (which then carries some legal implications as well). But I could certainly imagine a world where one is expected to pay a fee for a recommendation, and the more valuable the time of the person writing it, the higher the fee, but where the letters are just as honest. But perhaps in ours there’s a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy: if everyone believes only frauds sell letters of recommendations, then only frauds will be willing to sell letters of recommendations.
David Henderson
Feb 15 2020 at 11:43am
Just so you know, there’s no way I would write such a letter for a payment.
I once was offered $2,500 to write a piece in the WSJ that would say something I already agreed with and had even been thinking about writing. I said to the economist consultant who was offering it, “And I’m guessing you don’t want me to tell the Journal editor that I was paid by this company, right?” He said he didn’t. I refused. And I didn’t write the op/ed.
Matthias Görgens
Feb 10 2020 at 10:22pm
It’s a heartwarming story, but it’s a bit of a shame that such gymnastics are necessary in the first place. What about the people who don’t happen to know distinguished economists?
People may debate the merits of migration in general, but letting a citizen’s spouse settle in the country should be pretty uncontroversial and thus automatic?
David Henderson
Feb 10 2020 at 10:49pm
You wrote:
True on both counts.
You wrote:
I agree. My friend, his wife, and I all played the hands we were dealt.
IVV
Feb 11 2020 at 12:31pm
My wife is from Germany, and I remember the process to get her her green card was drawn out and difficult. It took us about a year with multiple visits to the office hours away. Still, we didn’t use a lawyer (for most of it), and was able to demonstrate that we were a stable, happy couple rather easily.
Although I distinctly remember the quick squeal of terror our INS agent uttered when he saw our Halloween photo.
We eventually needed a lawyer to just write them a letter that they’ve done everything and why don’t we have the green card already, but that was it.
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