Prince Harry’s past drug use raises questions about US visa
Prince Harry continues to learn that not everyone in his adopted homeland is happy about him being here. The latest group of Americans to come after the renegade British royal is the Heritage Foundation, which is pushing to find out whether the husband of Meghan Markle admitted to his past drug use when he applied for a visa to live in the United States.
The conservative think tank said it is in a battle with the U.S State Department, which is refusing to release any details about the Duke of Sussex’s visa application, the Daily Mail said. The group wants to know if Harry admitted using marijuana, cocaine and psychedelics on his application when he moved to the United States in 2020. If he failed to disclose his prior drug use, he could be accused of lying on his application, the group says. U.S. immigration law imposes harsh penalties for visitors and potential immigrants who lie to officials, including deportation and being barred from applying for citizenship.
The demand to see Harry’s application comes after Harry openly discussed using marijuana and cocaine in his book “Spare” and in the accompanying media blitz. While Harry claimed he only used cocaine as a teen, he admitted to experimenting with psychedelics well into his adulthood. In a recent online conversation with trauma expert Gabor Maté, Harry spoke openly about his recreational use of psychedelics and said the drugs helped him deal with past traumas.
“I started doing it recreationally and then started to realize how good it was for me,” Harry said. “I would say it is one of the fundamental parts of my life that changed me and helped me deal with the traumas and the pains of the past.”
Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, told the Daily Mail that Harry’s admitted use of illegal substances raises questions about what he said on his application, whether he was properly vetted before entering the United States and whether he continues to use drugs.
Thus far, the State Department has refused to make Harry’s visa application public, with a spokesperson telling the Daily Mail: “Visa records are confidential under Section 222(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA); therefore, we cannot discuss the details of individual visa cases.”
Legal experts are divided over whether Harry’s past drug use jeopardizes his ability to stay in the United States to live and work. Harry and Meghan, a former Hollywood TV actor, live in Montecito, where they are raising their two young children. The son of King Charles III also has a position as “a chief impact officer” for a San Francisco mental health startup, BetterUp, and presumably uses Montecito as his base for working on the couple’s production deals with Netflix and Spotify.
“An admission of drug use is usually grounds for inadmissibility,” former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Page Six. “That means Prince Harry’s visa should have been denied or revoked because he admitted to using cocaine, mushrooms and other drugs.”
Rahmani, president of Los Angeles-based West Coast Trial Lawyers, also said that there is “no exception for royalty or recreational use.”
But James Leonard, a New Jersey-based attorney who represented “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” star Joe Giudice in his immigration case, disagreed with Rahmani that Harry’s U.S. status was at risk.
“Absent any criminal charge related to drugs or alcohol or any finding by a judicial authority that Prince Harry is a habitual drug user, which he clearly is not, I don’t see any issue with the disclosures in his memoir regarding recreational experimentation with drugs,” Leonard told Page Six.
Leonard said immigration officials need a reason to launch an investigation into a person’s status, such as the person being arrested for a criminal act. “You’ve got to give them something that would trigger it, and revealing it in a book, that you experimented with drugs when you were a young man, I don’t think gets you there,” he said.
It’s not known what type of visa Harry holds, but analysts speculate he either holds a spousal visa — sponsored by his American wife — or an O-1 visa which is given to people with “extraordinary ability,” the Daily Mail said. Other celebrities known to be in the United States on an O-1 visa include Canadian singer Justin Bieber and Australian actor Hugh Jackman.
That the Heritage Foundation has made Harry’s visa an issue probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. Since Harry and Meghan’s acrimonious departure from royal life, the couple have irked U.S. conservatives with their progressive politics and with the perception that they are lecturing regular people from a position of wealth and entitlement.
The foundation said that “public confidence” in the U.S. government would be undermined if it appeared that its agencies failed to properly vet such a high-profile individual or if Harry admitted his past drug use but “received preferential treatment” and was allowed to stay in the United States anyway.
US officials can stop people who have committed drug offenses from entering the country. Suspected drug abusers applying for visas also may be required to answer additional questions about their medical history or take a medical exam to prove that they are not still using drugs. For example, TV chef Nigella Lawson was initially banned from flying to the United States in 2014, four months after she admitted she once used cocaine with her husband in 2010.