My student is applying for permanent residency

[fizzycist]

If you want to help them, then I would just suggest to them friends of yours from conferences or back in grad school/postdoc or whatever who are now faculty at R1 universities.

The "letter writers" you recommend will have to do some work (the lawyers are always overzealous in their drafting of the letters and put in crap that I can't sign off on), but not *that* much. Usually at the level of scanning a CV, browsing paper abstracts, and pushing back on a handful of BS phrases.

I respectfully disagree.  From my experience with government beaurocrats, they have very specific criteria they are looking for and don't care about any extras that you may think are important.  Your connections may write a fantastic LOR for them, but if it misses the key points that the evaluator has on their pre-populated score card, they could be denied.  I could be wrong, but my suspicion on this particular one is that there is a list of acceptable demonstrable examples, such as researchers who have cited their work,.and a letter just supporting them in more general terms would not meet these criteria. 

Regarding the letters I have received, they were actually quite reserved and I had no issue signing them pretty much as they were sent.  More importantly, the letters were from different applicants, but we're very similar, leading me to believe the lawyers are either using a template or addressing a very specific list of assessment criteria.  For this reason, I would recommend your student sticks to the script.

Which is the part you disagree with?

I have "written" about 10 of these including one from my own student. The green card candidates pay good money for their lawyers and have always stuck with the lawyers script. But in almost every case, the lawyers put in claims that didn't make sense to me.

For example, I recently got one that said the candidate was a highly cited researcher. But they had only 70 lifetime citations according to google scholar. By any reasonable metric they were not "highly cited". I want the candidate to get their green card, but I'm not going to lie to do it. So I told them to delete it, they did, and they recently got their green card. There were others, claiming connections of the work to unrealistic applications, etc. I don't remember them all, just remember that I had to require edits before signing just about every time.

[Kron3007]

If you want to help them, then I would just suggest to them friends of yours from conferences or back in grad school/postdoc or whatever who are now faculty at R1 universities.

The "letter writers" you recommend will have to do some work (the lawyers are always overzealous in their drafting of the letters and put in crap that I can't sign off on), but not *that* much. Usually at the level of scanning a CV, browsing paper abstracts, and pushing back on a handful of BS phrases.

I respectfully disagree.  From my experience with government beaurocrats, they have very specific criteria they are looking for and don't care about any extras that you may think are important.  Your connections may write a fantastic LOR for them, but if it misses the key points that the evaluator has on their pre-populated score card, they could be denied.  I could be wrong, but my suspicion on this particular one is that there is a list of acceptable demonstrable examples, such as researchers who have cited their work,.and a letter just supporting them in more general terms would not meet these criteria. 

Regarding the letters I have received, they were actually quite reserved and I had no issue signing them pretty much as they were sent.  More importantly, the letters were from different applicants, but we're very similar, leading me to believe the lawyers are either using a template or addressing a very specific list of assessment criteria.  For this reason, I would recommend your student sticks to the script.

Which is the part you disagree with?

I have "written" about 10 of these including one from my own student. The green card candidates pay good money for their lawyers and have always stuck with the lawyers script. But in almost every case, the lawyers put in claims that didn't make sense to me.

For example, I recently got one that said the candidate was a highly cited researcher. But they had only 70 lifetime citations according to google scholar. By any reasonable metric they were not "highly cited". I want the candidate to get their green card, but I'm not going to lie to do it. So I told them to delete it, they did, and they recently got their green card. There were others, claiming connections of the work to unrealistic applications, etc. I don't remember them all, just remember that I had to require edits before signing just about every time.

.

I disagree with asking an old friend/contact to write an LOR for them unless they have a direct demonstrable connection to the applicant that is valid for this purpose. 

Our experiences seem quite different.  The letters I received were quite modest and made no major claims.  They were very specific and focussed on the fact that I cited them and their work contributed to the field.

[fizzycist]

Ah I see the misunderstanding. I am not suggesting the student circumvent the usual process with the lawyers.

When my student started the green card process they also asked me for some names of potential ppl to ask. They took the list to their lawyer and then the two of them worked out who to invite. The lawyer was the one who initiated my students asking me because apparently the lawyer thought if it was someone I knew they are more likely to accept the letter request.

When I was initially asked, like the OP I also asked myself if/who I should mention. Fortunately, I had already written a handful of these at that point so I knew the amount of work involved (not too much but not negligible). So I did not feel bad mentioning friends because I knew it wouldn't be too much of a burden, but I also didn't mention one particular person because I knew they were stressed out and didn't need more requests.

[Hibush]

Lawyers seem to vary in their aggressiveness and judgement. The inconsistency in visa numbers, timelines and expectations probably drives a lot of it.

I was asked to write one for a postdoc at another university whose work I had found interesting. He was going for an EB-2 which is reasonable, but asking for the waiver of a job offer which is a big stretch. There are a lot of noncitizens with three years of postdoc but uncertain permanent-job prospects. Still, I was willing. The lawyer decided to go for an EB-1 (which is for professors who are being hired with tenure as a bare minimum) and wrote a draft for me with EB-1-like claims that were preposterous. I wrote a supportive letter of my own that was truthful and that the lawyer appeard to accept.