NSC NIW RFE on recommendation letter similarities, Am i screwed? Please help.

N

Newhope2005

Registered Users (C)
Surprisingly after my recent NIW submission, in 10 days, i got this RFE.
**************************************************
Here is the detail:
******************************************
There are great similarities in the letter from XXX dated XXX, signed by XXX; and in the
letter from YYY dated YYY, signed by
YYY. Please explain why these two letters contain substantially the
same verbiage. Please also submit additional letters or documentations from the
two experts who allegedly signed these letters to confirm the attestations made
therein.

Please identify all other duplicate or substantially similar verbiage among
disparate documentation that you have submitted in support of your petition, and
provide explanations for those similarities or duplications. Please also submit
additional evidence to confirm the information/attestations provided in the
evidence.

*********************
When i asked the independent experts for the recommendation letters, they asked for a draft. So i must have used the similar words here and there.
Am i screwed? Is this a very bad RFE?
Please help!!!
Thanks in advance.
 
do you have a lawyer? I guess you don't have one. otherwise this should not happen. you may explain that you were asked to provide a sample letter by the referees, who might have picked up some words from the same sample letter. therefore, there is similarity.
 
NSC-NIW05 said:
do you have a lawyer? I guess you don't have one. otherwise this should not happen. you may explain that you were asked to provide a sample letter by the referees, who might have picked up some words from the same sample letter. therefore, there is similarity.
Click to expand...

This is also the result of those kits or people sharing recommendation letters. When you review these types of petitions for a living, the patterns take shape. A sure giveaway is if the leters contained the same incoorect grammar usage. I guess this reviewer was tired of seeing it.

Newhope2005, you are going to have to answer the question otherwise your petition will be rejected. It doesn't look good.

Brian
 
Newhope2005 said:
Surprisingly after my recent NIW submission, in 10 days, i got this RFE.
**************************************************
Here is the detail:
******************************************
There are great similarities in the letter from XXX dated XXX, signed by XXX; and in the
letter from YYY dated YYY, signed by
YYY. Please explain why these two letters contain substantially the
same verbiage. Please also submit additional letters or documentations from the
two experts who allegedly signed these letters to confirm the attestations made
therein.

Please identify all other duplicate or substantially similar verbiage among
disparate documentation that you have submitted in support of your petition, and
provide explanations for those similarities or duplications. Please also submit
additional evidence to confirm the information/attestations provided in the
evidence.

*********************
When i asked the independent experts for the recommendation letters, they asked for a draft. So i must have used the similar words here and there.
Am i screwed? Is this a very bad RFE?
Please help!!!
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Get new letters from the same persons. Make sure they are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT in terms of verbiage and confirm that these people also wrote previous letter. Submit more letters from other people, the more the better. Try to taylor the drafts so that they look very different. Ask your friends who did their GC for their letters, everyone should keep the copies. If you have a few samples of letters before you, your drafts will be much better than if you use the same sample for all letters. Try to be creative. If you think that you can not manage that, hire an experienced immigration attorney to answer this RFE and prepare new letters.
As for the answer to the question, "why these two letters contain substantially thesame verbiage", I would be honest and say that these people might have used the same draft. Maybe it's not the right answer, so again, it maight be a good idea to get an attorney's advice. I would pay a few nundred $$ for attorney's fee but convince myself that I did all I could in this situation.

The best of luck!
 
I do have an attorney but now i think she might not be that good on this.
I submitted totally 10 references. All other 8 looked not similar at all and good.
Several of them are from the reviewer's own words. I just missed these two letters. There are a couple of sentences describing my work looked very similar.
I guess i am screwed.
I will ask the two reviewers to provide an explanation, attesting even the letters were based on a rough draft from me, they were serious about the letter and they were sure that every word describing my work or my achievements was accurate and precise.
I don't know what else i could do.
 
Newhope2005 said:
I do have an attorney but now i think she might not be that good on this.
I submitted totally 10 references. All other 8 looked not similar at all and good.
Several of them are from the reviewer's own words. I just missed these two letters. There are a couple of sentences describing my work looked very similar.
I guess i am screwed.
I will ask the two reviewers to provide an explanation, attesting even the letters were based on a rough draft from me, they were serious about the letter and they were sure that every word describing my work or my achievements was accurate and precise.
I don't know what else i could do.
Click to expand...

I would still get more letters from the people other than those included in your original submission because your RFE states: "Please also submit
additional evidence to confirm the information/attestations provided in the
evidence." At least two more to replace the bad ones.
Press on your lawyer to get help from her with that ASAP. In part, its her fault in submitting these letters without careful reviewing all of them. If she does not want to collaborate and fix the situation, hire another lawyer. Don't assume you are screwed because of 2 similar letters out of 10, but if you don't fight, you may indeed lose.

The best of luck!
 
Have you considered withdraw the application without reply RFE? Start fresh with a new case later on and get it all right at the first place. Also, it is kind of embarrassing to ask two independent experts to write a letter explaining the case. At least I feel that way.

Another thing, the reviewer surely know the reason why they are silimar. So claim they are from same draft may not be convincing.

Of course, you lose your money on the old application if you withdraw. Since it was only 10 days, not much time wasted. Imaging someone wait for years comes this RFE? That is really bad.
Your lawyer should not charge you again to file a new one.

Consults with your lawyer about this. Good luck.
 
similarities

Well, if you gave the same paper to both persons to read, they might very well describe what you did in the paper quite similarly... or even take some pieces from abstract and introduction and use them in the letter intact. That could explain the similarities.

If the paper is about "a model for loseless audio-olfactory sensor fusion with haptic output" and its abstract states that "this technology would be of great help for growing algae in Alaska's permafrost", it's no wonder that both recommendators will write that Dr. DDD has developed a very nice model for loseless audio-olfactory sensor fusion with haptic output which would be of great help for growing algae in Alaska's permafrost.

IANAL and all that.

/dzxing
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Newhope2005 said:
I do have an attorney but now i think she might not be that good on this.
I submitted totally 10 references. All other 8 looked not similar at all and good.
Several of them are from the reviewer's own words. I just missed these two letters. There are a couple of sentences describing my work looked very similar.
I guess i am screwed.
I will ask the two reviewers to provide an explanation, attesting even the letters were based on a rough draft from me, they were serious about the letter and they were sure that every word describing my work or my achievements was accurate and precise.
I don't know what else i could do.
Click to expand...


You should get the opinions from other lawyers since this is a pretty complicated case and IMO doesn't look too good. I would never write to the USCIS that you provided drafts to the scientists who wrote reference letters for you since USCIS will than assume that you did this with all your reference letters and all of them just represent your wordings and not the opinions of the scientists. And to be honest if not a lawyer comes up with a good idea you might considering withdrawing your case and start from the beginning.
 
Newhope2005, do you have any updates you could share with us regarding your RFE, if you are still checking this forum? How similar were your two letters? Was it just a couple of sentences here and there, or was it like a whole paragraph or something?

Anyone else on this forum with similar experience?

You know... After finding and reading this thread I started to worry about my own OR case. I have collected 18 recomm. letters and I have drafted almost all of them myself. While I have tried to minimize the similiarities, obviously the styles of the letters are similar to follow the suggested style by my attorney. Also there were only a certain number of ways I could describe my research contributions. So naturally there is a chance that one may find some sentences somewhat similar here and there in my letters.

Would that be a problem? The thing is that I am sure CIS officers know well that most references use drafted letters provided by the attorneys or the petitioners themselves. So I suppose just the fact the references were willing to sign the letter on their formal letterhead should be enough for the CIS officer to show their support and to show that they do indeed agree with all that's said in the letter.

In Newhope2005's case, it looks like the CIS reviewer is essentially questioning the authenticity of the signatures... This is really strange...

Any comments would be really appreciated... Thanks
 
Yes some repeating statements are bound to be there when you supply basic template. Self petition need that much care not to repeat those words. When I filed case and started using/reading this forum I came to know that there were some discripancy in presentation of my case for Eb1OR. Even though one takes extreme care.......some things you just can't avoid (even lawyers) ...................................... People got RFEs on many issue which i was inviting in my application. But eventually nothing happened. Moral is its not consistent parameter. You will do just fine!!! don't worry!!
 
Well, i replied the RFE on Nov 3. So far nothing happened yet.
I have not received any updates except they received the RFE on Nov4.
There were a couple of long sentences in the two letters and they were at the beginning of the paragraph... i was so stupid not carefull enough.
Anyway, i provided the attesting letters from the two experts stating their letters are truly their own judgement on my credentials. In addition, i provided 5 more letters from independent experts in the field, one of them from a Nobel prize laureate.
I think that is all i could do and i have tried my best to save this case.
I really don't know what will happen.
It is very wierd they were after similarities in the recommendation letters, they
must know a lot of letters are based on templates. My lawyers told me that it is very common that similar letters being used in most of her clients'...
I guess it is just me by random pick. Sometimes, people just need some luck...
Good luck.
Newhope2005
 
NIW vs. OR?

I feel very sympathetic for your somewhat unwarranted trouble, Newhope!

There might be many explanations possible for this, but in my impression reading this, it may be that those reviewers put more weight on recommendation letters for NIW cases than OR cases. While OR's are also supported by employer's commitment, NIW's are primarily based on what petitioners and other experts's have to say about them in the form of letters.

My attorney says (I'm going through OR) the reference letters are more of the stamp of approval by the referees rather than what exactly said in the letters. I worked with him previously for preparing O visa for me, and OR requires exactly the same set of evidences. So basically I'm recycling what I used for O visa again, where the letters are based on the template provided by my attorney and they could be easily suspected to be, if one reads carefully, drafted by the same person. So if GC reviewers fuss about this issue, I guess I'm loyally screwed.

Personally, I think the most likely reason was the reviewer had a fight with his wife in the morning before the review, or was whipped by supervisor.

JollyFella
 
My attorney's view:

"The answer really depends on the Officer who reviews your petition and we just
never know. Some are cautious, others are not. Therefore, we should try to make
the letters look different, specifically the first and last paragraphs.

Also, please note that my policy is not to submit all letters at once with
the petition just in case an RFE is issued later, we can submit the remaining
letters at that point in time. Therefore, if we wind up with a few that are too
similar we can divide them upon submission."

Hope this helps...

JollyFella
 
Somewhere is AAO decision I recall a case of chinese post-doc involving similar subject. The the AAO decision went against the beneficiary since the letters had similar mistakes in english language or typos. Probably you guys can search the AAO decision.
 
Sandy2000 said:
Somewhere is AAO decision I recall a case of chinese post-doc involving similar subject. The the AAO decision went against the beneficiary since the letters had similar mistakes in english language or typos. Probably you guys can search the AAO decision.
Click to expand...
While , i did a research and found out this: SRC 01 225 64303, Feb 2004 AAO, the final decision was for the beneficiary, approval of the petition.
Regarding the similarities in the recommendation letters:

"The director correctly notes that some of the letters written in support of the petition 'are virtually identical (word for word).' it is highly improbable that the authors of those letters independently formulated the exact same wording. We agree with the director that xxx and xxx did not independently choose the wording of significant portions of their letters, but it is acknowledged that these individuals have lent their support to this petition. While the identical passages may detract from the overall weight given to their letters, we withdraw the director's conclusion that those passages 'cast doubt on [the letters'] authenticity and upon the information contained in the letters."

But i have not received any news from INS yet, the RFE replied on Nov 3rd. Already more than 2 months. I called the toll free number today and was told the representatives didn't know anything more than what is stated as the online message, which is still processing. :(
 
jollyfella said:
I hope you could make your case by citing the AAO
Click to expand...
In my opinion no!
AAO decisions exploits all possible loopholes to reject cases.
if you quote that they will read it in details and chances are good they will find more loopholes in your case.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top