International Musician Immigration Obstacles Bad for Recording and Entertainment Business
As immigration issues in the United States involving illegal immigrants from Mexico and other countries reached a fevered pitch this year, immigration problems of another kind have quietly been developing at the office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal recounts the difficulties that many British musicians are having in securing the immigration visas they need to tour in the United States. It's not your typical Department of Homeland Security run-in, and it's fortunately not a life or death kind of story, but it's one that's becoming more frequent with increasing popularity of British pop groups and recording artists.
Because of the enormous role that the Internet now plays in creating hype and popularity for bands through file sharing channels and social networking sites like YouTube and Myspace, just to name two examples, international recording artists are finding it more difficult to perform one of the steps in the visa process.
The "P-1" visa that most artists are required to apply for requires that a band or artist be "internationally recognized" for a "sustained and substantial" period of time. However, with the rapidity of popularity growth in today's Internet world, the level of popularity sufficient for booking a sold-out national tour is not necessarily the same thing as a "sustained and substantial" international presence. As the WSJ puts it, the artists having problems have "huge fan followings but short track records."
Because of their web hype, many artists have resorted to including clippings of reviews and articles from online publications with their visa applications. However, they must also prove that the publications are widely-read and influential, something that is not always easy to do, especially to a non-music-affiliated government agency.
And since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the immigration visa process has become all the more difficult for busy musicians to follow. In order to finalize visa approval, each person applying is required to appear at a U.S. embassy for fingerprinting, a retinal scan and an interview.
In order to help out those who may find the stricter guidelines difficult to comply with, the Immigration Office allows applicants to submit their applications for a visa up to one year in advance. However, due to the vagaries of booking clubs and organizing logistics for national tours, one year can be much too early for a band to have its plans cemented.
The immigration difficulties have plagued a diverse group of artists, from punk rockers New Model Army to pop singer Lily Allen, from dance-rock band The Klaxons to hip-hop artist M.I.A. The Journal reports that at least 10 tours planned by bands with international hype have been canceled within the past year, on top of three major tours canceled in the month of September alone, due to immigration visa issues.
And for any artist, the loss of potential income can be devastating. As the WSJ reports, the Lily Allen canceled tour would have netted the artist around $120,000 for six shows, not to mention the lost income from merchandise and potential record sales from the awareness generated by her tour.
The bad news for the United States economy, further, is that immigration restrictions aren't just affecting popular entertainers or musicians. Employees in fields such as banking, technology, medicine and other fields are finding difficulties getting and keeping employment visas, and companies are finding it increasingly difficult to hire talented people from abroad, the WSJ relates.
Even the normally robust travel and tourism industry has seen drastic drops since post-9/11 security measures have made it difficult for travelers to secure visas and pass security hassle-free coming into the United States. Another recent roundup in USA Today discusses a new proposed visa waiver program for citizens of countries that apply and are approved by the United States. This program is designed to bring travel levels back to near their all-time high in 2000, after which they dropped 17%, meaning a loss of nearly 200,000 jobs and $16 billion in tax receipts.
As the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Office continues to find ways to streamline the visa process while maintaining the level of security needed to prevent further terrorist attacks, keep an eye on Total Immigration for legal updates and articles on the topic!