Prince Harry has won the right to keep his U.S. visa application private despite a self-reported history of drug use in his memoir, a U.S. judge has ruled.
Upon moving to the U.S. in January 2020 after stepping back from royal duties with his wife, Meghan Markle, Harry would have filled out a visa form in which he was required to declare any history of drug use. Considering his admittance to the use of marijuana, cocaine, and mushrooms in his memoir, titled Spare, some folks felt it necessary to try and see if he had disclosed this usage on his immigration forms.
As the memoir was published in January of 2023, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation brought a lawsuit last year, arguing that the prominent coverage of the Prince’s drug use could indicate that the government had failed to adequately vet his application. The basis of the request was that if the forms did not disclose the history of drug use, then the government would have failed in its duty.
Ultimately, despite the request for transparency, the judge decided that personal privacy comes first. “Like any foreign national, the duke has a legitimate privacy interest in his immigration status,” Judge Carl Nichols said, ruling that “the public does not have a strong interest in disclosure” of Prince Harry’s immigration records.
Even had the forms been made public, the granting of visa applications is hardly a hard science, with much of it being down to the individual case officers making their decisions on a case-by-case basis. It’s tough to imagine a world where someone decides not to let a member of the British Royal Family into America for any reason. 1776 was a long time ago, after all.
Heritage Foundation is something of a paradoxical interest group. On the one hand, it has a website that makes a big deal about its numerous meetings with congressional staff, members of Congress, Capitol Hill alumni, and more. On the other hand, that same website also claims America is heading in lots of directions it doesn’t like, so I am unsure what that says about its overall effectiveness.
It’s actually a bit of good news for Prince Harry, who has certainly been having a bit of a hard time of it lately. Rumors continue to dog the Prince and his wife that they are not really meeting their public personas in private. Harry also continues to have a somewhat fractured relationship with his father, King Charles III, which is sure to lead to an awkward Christmas season.
Well, at least this is one thing off his Royal to-do list.