The Duke of Sussex would have to 'start from scratch' on a new application if he wanted to be granted permanent residency in the US
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Prince Harry will not be able to become a US citizen under the rules of his current “special kind of visa”, an American immigration lawyer has said.
Melissa Chavin, who works for the Chavin Immigration Law Office, joined GB News' Digital Royal Editor Svar Nanan-Sen and Royal Correspondent Cameron Walker on this week's episode of The Royal Record podcast.
Chavin said that the Duke of Sussex would have to “start from scratch” on a new application if he wanted to be granted permanent residency in the US.
Svar asked the immigration lawyer: “If Harry entered the country with an A1 head of state visa, and let's say in the coming years he wanted to apply to be a US citizen, what would the process be then? Would he have to start from scratch?”
Prince Harry will not be able to become a US citizen under the rules of his current 'special kind of visa'
ReutersShe explained in response: “Yes. There's no path to being a US citizen using an A1 visa. It is a diplomat visa. You want to give someone the experience, basically that they're not in the United States, even though they are physically in the United States.”
Cameron then asked about the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington DC which is suing the Department of Homeland Security for not releasing Harry’s records. He said: “How unprecedented would it be if the judge orders the Biden administration to release Prince Harry's immigration records?”
Chavin responded: “It’s quite unprecedented, I think, to release a person's records. I think that there would have to be a serious public interest in it. And I don't think that this interest, it doesn't rise to the level of breaking the privacy.”
The immigration lawyer discussed Harry’s likely A1 visa, which is “a special kind that is for the head of state or royal families”.
Asked by Cameron what kind of visa she thinks the prince has, Chavin replied: “I think that the visa Prince Harry is on is something that none of us see, and for me it is very uncommon and rare.”
However, for the Royal Family, Chavin said that it is the “most common” type of visa they think about.
“Do we need a visa to go to the United States? Yes of course. Which one? Oh, it's the A1, of course,” she said.
The Duke of Sussex's US visa documents are at the centre of a court battle, since he admitted to taking illegal drugs in the UK and America in his memoir Spare.
Prince Harry''s current visa would not allow him to become a US citizen
GettyPRINCE HARRY LATEST:
The Heritage Foundation is taking legal action against the Department of Homeland Security in a bid to force officials to release Harry's visa documents.
The organisation wants to see if the royal admitted to using illegal drugs before gaining a US visa.
Under US law, foreign nationals who have admitted to taking drugs can be turned away at the border and refused a visa.
However, disclosure of previous drug use does not automatically mean immigrants will be banned but they are legally obliged to declare whether they have taken drugs on their visa application.