250% hike in visa fee for foreign artists to tour in US could be devastating
NEW YORK (AP) — Performing in the US for international artists just got a lot more complicated.
On April 1, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services instituted a 250 percent visa fee increase for global musicians hoping to tour in the US.
Artists, advocacy groups and immigration lawyers are concerned it could have devastating effects on emerging talent worldwide and local music economies in the US.
If you’re a musician from outside of the United States hoping to perform stateside and you filed visa paperwork before April 1, the cost per application was $460.
After that date? $1,615 to $1,655. Bands and ensemble groups pay per performer. A standard rock band of four members went from paying $1,840 to around $6,460. And if you can’t wait a few months for approval, add $2,805 per application for expedited processing.
If the application is not accepted, that money is not refunded — on top of losses from a canceled tour and missing out on “significant, potentially career-changing opportunities,” says Jen Jacobsen, executive director at The Artist Rights Alliance.
If a musician has support staff, a backing band or other employees to bring on the tour, these individuals need visas, too.
“Even if you’re Capitol Records and you have all the money in the world to throw at it, you still can’t get rid of US bureaucracy,” says immigration attorney Gabriel Castro.
All international musicians require work authorization to perform in the
US. There are few exemptions: Those are reserved for “showcases” through the Visa Waiver Program — like what is often used at South by Southwest, where international artists perform exclusively at official showcases, without pay and for exposure.
Currently, there are few hurdles for US musicians looking to enter other countries for the specific purpose of earning money through live performances. According to Castro, American performers are able to enter most countries without a visa and under an exception to tourism rules.
Gareth Paisey, singer of the independent, seven-piece Welsh band Los Campesinos!, will tour in the US this June. The band made sure to apply for visas before the April 1 cut off, a difference of paying $3,220 or $11,305 in fees. Next time they have to get a visa, he says they’ll likely try to squeeze two tours in one year — the length of their particular visa — to make up the cost.
He says the application process requires providing an itinerary for the full year and supplemental evidence: press clippings to justify their status as “career musicians,” and testimonials from people of note — often from more famous musicians.
“Nobody gets into a band because they’ve got a passion for making cash flow forecasts,“he says. “It’s unfair to expect people who are brilliant at writing songs to also be brilliant at filling out a 20-page visa application.”
After Brexit, he says touring in Europe for UK acts has become more complicated, but the US process is by far the most complex — both in terms of paperwork and what it represents for music moving forward.
“This idea that you need to be a career musician to get a visa, and visa fees are going up, increases the idea that music is a competition,” says Paisey. “And part of that competition is making as much money as you can — like that’s the only valid way to participate in the music industry.”
Two reasons: They hadn’t in some time, and because immigration officials are scrutinizing the process more closely.
The last increase was in 2016, when fees grew from $325 to $460.
The US government is “putting more and more burden on the application process,” says Castro of BAL Sports and Entertainment Practice, which specializes in visas for musicians, entertainers and athletes.
He says 20 years ago, applications were just two or three pages. Now, they’re 15 to 20 pages.
“And those are just the forms before supporting evidence,” he says. “Now I’m submitting documents that are 200 pages, 300 pages long just to explain why this band should be traveling throughout the United States.”
Officials “might have done better to look at inefficiencies in the system to save money,” he says.
Paisey says he’s heard that the increase will allow the USCIS to “get rid of the backlog . ... But is that because you’re going to employ more staff or is it probably because you’re going to get less applications?“he wonders, because it’s going to benefit “people who can afford to go than rather than who wants to go or has the fan base to go.”
Castro says some of it is to account for “abuses in the system — to make sure that individuals that are coming here for certain activities actually have those activities in place,” but the increased scrutiny is a lingering effect from Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“The immigration process overall became more difficult for everyone. Whether you’re coming across the border, whether you’re coming here to perform at Madison Square Garden, whatever it is,“he says. “That has changed the culture of US immigration agencies.”