Bringing Foreign Artists To The U.S.

A panel at this year’s Great Escape convention in Brighton addressed the most pressing visa issues and discussed what steps are being taken to address these problems both within the industry and through changes to visa requirements. One expert on the panel was Matthew Covey, whose non-profit organization Tamizdat offers artists free legal assistance when facing visa problems. “Every UK act touring the US first starts with the assumption that they need an employment visa,” he said.

His motto is to start from that assumption and then find exceptions. One was the showcase exception, which applies if an artist travels to the US to “show their wares and try to find buyers.” SXSW qualified, because artists went there to showcase and eventually gain employment rather than being there for the crowd’s entertainment. Another exception applies to artists traveling to the U.S. for the purpose of recording an album without further plans of licensing, releasing or touring in the country. It’s worth remembering that U.S. officers at the airport can send back people anytime. Rogue officers sometimes did this for arbitrary reasons, and everybody on the panel had at least one story to exemplify this. So the showcase exception might work, but it might not, especially if when traveling somewhere not known for hosting showcase events.

“If you can’t find an exception, there’s a variety of different visas,” Covey continued, explaining the P1 (“members of an ensemble with sustained international renown”), O1 (“typically for individuals”), O2 (“backing musicians”) and the P3 (“for folk musicians, to put it simply”). Since P2 applies only to Canadian artists at the moment, Covey didn’t go into it much. He simply emphasized how convenient it was, as it allows Canadian artists to just present the required forms at the border where they’ll be processed. “It saves a lot of time.” Time is crucial when it comes to applying for a visa. Covey recommended to start working toward the right visa as early as six months before going on tour.

Mark Davyd (Music Venue Trust) adjusted that figure to nine months and remarked how this did not reflect the current state of the music business, where things were going very fast. Besides time, money is the other big issue. All the different fees for applying for visa, especially as a band, add up. Not to mention unforeseen costs, if the embassy loses a passport or simply doesn’t grant the visa, which means shows and travel arrangements need to be rescheduled. UK Music is the British music industry’s lobby group.

The visa situation is on its agenda. CEO Jo Dipple told the audience at Great Escape about the tiring process of working one’s way through politics to find the right person of reference, a feat that sometimes seems impossible, given the constant denial of responsibility that politics can amount to. “That hasn’t changed since I joined UK Music [in 2008],” she said. The possibility of Donald Trump becoming elected president, which would likely restrict immigration even further, as well as Britain exiting the EU, which would influence trade, “is going to be incredibly damaging for British music,” Dipple continued. According to Covey, the most effective way to address systemic visa problems is to put together “the broadest international coalition of artist organizations (…) to support a unified platform of regulatory changes.”

He was deliberately not speaking about statutory changes, as that would require involving congress. But regulations could be changed, simply by convincing people that you had the better ideas. Another step in gathering a strong voice for addressing visa issues was the formation of the UK visa taskforce by the Musicians’ Union and British Underground earlier this year. They put out a small passport-shaped leaflet summarizing all crucial checkpoints when traveling to the US. But even following those guarantees nothing.

According to Horace Trubridge (The Musicians’ Union), the wrong name or skin color can get you turned down. They’re very paranoid down there. It’s an intimidating situation,” Trubridge said. Until that changes, the only thing artists could do is “be thoroughly prepared, and know all the right answers.”