writing letter of support for H1-B visa applicant I can't find a suitable tag for my question. I hope I'm posting to the right place. I apologize if not.

I'm a prof in CS in US. I have been asked to write a letter of support for a graduate (BSc), call him X, who is applying for H1-B visa. The graduate is non-US and hence need the visa.

I myself have gone through the process several times many years ago. In all my experience, the hiring company has a manager who documents my performance and the letter is written by the manager with the support of the CTO, etc. As a software engineer (in a previous life), I of course totally understand the importance of CS education. But I also know that CS education alone without work experience is insufficient. That's why in all immigration lawyer websites I have seen, they always mention the letter of support should address the applicant's ability to actually perform their tasks. In all my H1-B visa application, my PhD advisor was never asked to write letters to support my H1-B visa application, whether it was for post-doc research, teaching or software engineering.

X has included in his email a webpage that say something to the effect that "Task A can best be done by someone with a CS degree" and wants me to use that too. As an educator, I cannot possibly vouch for whether X can perform his job or not. I believe I can only say something about his grades. Furthermore for all my students in the past 10 years, none of the surveys I have filled in ever ask "Can applicant do his job?". The questions are mostly about his skill level in comparison to others such as "Rank applicant 1-5 in terms of his programming skills." This is the same for all phone calls for reference checks. Also, X has not taken many classes with me.

Can anyone comment on this? This is a supporting letter for H1-B visa application, not for a job application. Thanks in advance.
If you can only talk about his grades from a few classes, have you considered telling the person that you might not be the best choice for a letter of support?

Even just a class can be enough to see a student's skill, for example if a project is a big component in the class or if the instructor closely examines sufficiently detailed assignments and exams. This is really the useful kind of component: "X is skilled at task Y, as evidenced by his work doing Z..." If you just say someone is skilled without much evidence, it won't be afforded much weight anyhow.

If there has been no actual work, you can at most comment on:


Their grasp of technical knowledge taught in the course
Their intellectual ability (how quickly they were able to learn)
Their discipline and professionalism (e.g. in showing up to class, studying and submitting assignments on time)
Their talent for that for this area of work based on their performance in the course


It sounds like not much, so as I said, perhaps you might not be the best person to write this.

If you really want to write the letter, I would advise asking fellow faculty if they have experience in such a situation and whether they can help you.