A hostile environment for performing artists
Sackbut alerted us to this infuriating clusterfuck:
Immigration lawyers believe the State Department has been denying more artist visas after President Trump ordered heightened vetting for all visa applications earlier this year.
In a March 6 memo, released after Trump issued his second executive order on immigration, the president directed “immediate implementation of additional heightened screening and vetting protocols and procedures for issuing visas.” The memo, according to some prominent attorneys who specialize in artist travel, has further complicated the subjective process international artists must navigate to perform in the U.S., and in some cases, [had an impact on] programming for local arts organizations.
Programmers at the Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF), a Grammy-winning event that caters to Renaissance and Baroque music enthusiasts, were surprised and dismayed in May, when, for the first time, U.S. immigration services denied four of the 26 visa applications BEMF applied for. The visas were for the four young women of the German group, Boreas Quartett Bremen. The group, who plays handmade recorders, had to cancel their performance in Boston.
What.the.hell. What’s the thinking here? One of them might be a terrorist on the side? You just never can tell with people weird enough to play handmade recorders?
“I was rather shocked. Our audience has really missed out on a unique and beautiful performance,” said Shannon Canavin, the festival’s visa specialist. Canavin has been filing artists’ applications for more than 20 years and had not encountered a denial until this year.
In 2016, the U.S. issued more than 63,866 O and P visas, which enable athletes, entertainment groups or other people with extraordinary abilities in the sciences or business and those traveling with them to visit the U.S. for short term contractual employment and performances. In March and April of this year, the only months the State Department has released data for, the U.S issued only 697 of those visas. (Monthly tallies for visas issued in 2016 are not available.) A State Department spokesperson said the government released information on the number of visas issued in March and April after the president ordered the department to “quantify the national security work of our consular operations around the world.”
S0 last year the monthly rate was 5322, so 10,644 for two months, compared to 697 for two months this year. Bit of a drop.
It’s insane. It’s appalling. Cultural exchanges of this kind are good things, and piggy ignorant philistine vulgarian Trump is stamping them out, because he’s so stupid he thinks “foreigner=likely terrorist” – except of course for the citizens of our beloved ally Saudi Arabia.
“What we’re seeing right now is an awful lot more skepticism from officers,” said Matthew Covey, an immigration lawyer and the co-founder of Tamizdat, a nonprofit that advises and advocates for traveling artists. “The delays that you’re going to be experiencing in getting those visas are longer than they would have been a year ago… What is a broader effect, I think, is that there is a pervasive sense in the international community that the U.S. is becoming a hostile environment for performing artists.”
Of course.
He shames us all. He shames the country and he shames us.
Were the potential audience members for this quartet likely to have voted for Trump? Smells like Liberal Coastal Elite outrage to me. Making liberals cry makes the base happy!
Now, if these women had been visiting to drive monster trucks…..
Hmm. But would civil servants in the State Department – who are the ones who do the vetting – fit that description? I think State Department civil servants are probably about as Liberal Coastal Elite as it gets, short of actually being Meryl Streep.
Good point, but maybe it’s a case of knowing which way the wind is blowing from the White House and CYA. Somebody in the chain of command is following Trump’s lead, reluctantly or not.
I suspect a part of this is looking at groups of people and assessing whether they are likely to claim asylum or simply disappear while in the US and become illegal immigrants. Hard to understand the Boreas Quatet though, and also the marked upswing in refusals since twoscoops took office.
On that note, surely I’m not the only one to notice that the justification for the travel ban was to allow time for implementation of better vetting techniques. That period was time bound. Despite the ban having been held up in the courts for around the length of that time restriction there appears to have been zero progress on improved vetting at all. One might almost believe the whole thing was a sham.
Rob, their excuse for no improvements would be that they couldn’t make progress without implementing a ban but, speaking purely hypothetically, if there’s been no progress on improved vetting then the numbers of approved applications shouldn’t be showing a significant drop. However, if the reduction that we do see is down to improved vetting then it shows that newer systems have been able to be implemented without any temporary shutdown, which makes a nonsense of Trump’s call for a ban in the first place.
Obviously, in practise there are no new official systems in place. Unofficially, a new rule of refusal being the default response to applications is, I suspect, very much being implemented.
Interesting – this was women, the robotics was girls – maybe Trump just doesn’t want talented, intelligent women entering the country? Less likely to submit to having their pussy grabbed, perhaps?