Prince Harry: Lawyers say drug use should have seen him denied US residency

Prince Harry should have been denied US residency because of his now self-admitted drug use and could see it revoked if he withheld the information, a leading US immigration expert has claimed.

Harry admitted to taking magic mushrooms and cocaine in his bombshell memoir Spare, claiming that psychedelics allowed him to see “the truth”.

But anyone wanting to move permanently to the US will be quizzed on their drug use and admissions can see them blocked.

“He would have been asked [about drug use]. If he was truthful in his answers, he should have been denied,” Professor Alberto Benítez, director of George Washington University’s Immigration Clinic, told the Daily Telegraph.

Harry moved to California with his wife Meghan in early 2020.

Benitez suggested that his royal status may have afforded him greater latitude with US immigration officials.

“If he wasn’t Prince Harry, if was ‘Fred Jones’ and he had this kind of a background, he’d have a lot more scrutiny and I could certainly see the green card being denied.”

If he failed to come clean, Benitez said: “One of the repercussions, whatever visa he has, is that it would be revoked, or he’ll be subject to being revoked because he lied in the application process.”

Another lawyer, Chrissie Fernandez, disagreed with the assessment and said it was unlikely his drug use would preclude him from getting residency.

“In theory, if Prince Harry ever possessed any illicit substances, even if he was not arrested, he would have been required to disclose that,” she told The Telegraph.

“As it relates to past drug use without a conviction, it’s unlikely to cause a real problem for him,” she added.

“It’s unlikely that his case would be reopened if immigration authorities were to hear that he previously, years ago, used drugs... So unless he talked about using drugs quite recently, it’s unlikely to have affected his getting immigrant status in the US.”