Immigrant Imaginations 2

 

[As a continuation of the examination of how official U.S. immigration policy directly affects the arts, and theater in particular, I’m posting a second article from the “Immigrant Imaginations” issue of American Theatre.  This piece deals specifically with the vicissitudes of visas for visiting artists and troupes.  As you’ll read, the repercussions of this system effect not only the artists who want to come here to show their work, but the host companies that invite them, and how the vagaries built into the system can throw off a festival or a whole theater’s season,] 

“EXTREME VETTING AND EXTRAORDINARY ABILITY”
by Miriam Felton-Dansky

[This report ran in American Theatre, volume 41, issue 4 (Summer 2025). It was also posted on the AT website on 22 July 2025.]

The politics of international artist visas have never run smooth,
but they’ve become increasingly bumpy in a changing U.S.

Last year, before curator Elena Siyanko left her post as executive and artistic director of PS21 [“center for contemporary performance” in Chatham, New York], she programmed Hatched Ensemble, a piece by a South African dance group led by Mamela Nyamza [b. 1976, Cape Town, South Africa], to play the Hudson Valley venue this past spring. This year, in her new role directing a New York-based festival called “Down to Earth” [29 August-7 September 2025], she’s booked the Senegalese circus troupe SenCirk. International exchange is central to Siyanko’s curatorial mission. Yet, when she spoke for this article, she was unsure whether either ensemble would safely arrive in the U.S. Even if visa petitions and consular interviews were to go smoothly, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol could prevent them from entering the country. “I am terrified by what may happen,” she told American Theatre. (Crisis averted in both cases: Hatched Ensemble went up without incident, and SenCirk members all got visas in time for two outdoor appearances at Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park on Sept. 5, and two at LaGuardia Community College Performing Arts Center in Queens on Sept 3.)

Since President Trump’s second inauguration, international travel to the U.S. has become distinctly more dangerous. In an era of international student visa revocations, unlawful renditions of legal U.S. residents, a sweeping new travel ban, and terrifying uncertainty as ICE [United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ramps up detention and deportation actions, the U.S. and global artistic community has not been spared scrutiny and stress.

In January, lawyer Matthew Covey [b. ca. 1968], executive director of the nonprofit Tamizdat, which advocates for international artistic mobility and cultural exchange, emailed the organization’s constituents with an update about the potential impacts of Trump’s litany of executive orders. One of these, Covey wrote—with the title “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats”—was, in his words, “the one to watch.” Its broad application could lead to discrimination based on artistic expression as well as country of origin, for “visa applicants—especially those from Global Majority nations [a collective term for people of African, Asian, Indigenous, Latin American, and mixed-heritage backgrounds, who constitute the majority of the world’s population].”

[The link embedded above in the name Tamizdat leads to the organization’s website. It explains the organization’s mission and purpose, recounts its origin, and discusses its works. If, however, you click on “about” at the top or bottom of the page, you will also find an explanation of the organization’s name, about which I was curious. (It’s related to the Russian portmanteau word samizdat, if any reader remembers that from the Soviet days. The Tamizdat site explains that, too.)]

The U.S. performing arts face a range of dangerous unknowns, and for anyone concerned about the fate of international cultural exchange, the current state of the visa system sits at the heart of them. The problems, though newly dire, spring from a system that has long been unfriendly to international artists, particularly artists from the Global South [a broad, non-geographical term referring to countries, mostly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, that are often characterized by lower-income status, a shared history of colonialism, and current socio-economic challenges]. For many presenters and artists, the U.S. was already unpredictable and hostile terrain, characterized by unpredictable geopolitics, American prejudices, and enervating bureaucracy, even before the current administration took office.

Many presenters told American Theatre that this puts the U.S. out of step with the international community. In Canada, international performers must apply for an inexpensive entry visa, often with no additional work permit; in the U.K., visa requirements are conveyed in “plain English” so that applicants don’t need legal teams to parse them. Such distinctions hardly apply only in Anglophone countries. Producer Thomas O. Kriegsmann [b. ca. 1975] of ArKtype, which produces the recently reconfigured Under the Radar Festival, said that in touring choreographer nora chipaumire’s [b. 1965] ensemble to Brazil, he encountered little of the red tape and the expenses he’s seen in over two decades of working with the U.S. visa system.

The challenges apply to artists across the U.S., whether they’re attempting to navigate a long-term career or a short touring engagement. Individual artists have long navigated a costly, confusing, and prejudicial system here, even if they arrive on student visas and work steadily after graduation. Presenters at major organizations suggest that the American immigration system, while generally expensive and opaque, places particular burdens on artists from the Global South, especially those from Africa and the Middle East.

“It’s Islamophobia, it’s racism,” said Siyanko, who led PS21 from 2019 to 2025. Doreen Sayegh [b. 1988] of Pemberley Productions, which has managed major North American tours, from the immersive theatre piece The Jungle [created by Joe Murphy (b. ca. 1991) and Joe Robertson (b. ca. 1990) in 2017] to choreographer Matthew Bourne’s [b. 1960] Romeo and Juliet (ballet, débuted 2019), echoed the sentiment. “We do work harder around petitions where we have artists from certain countries,” she said, naming the Global South and the Middle East.

[Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, known as “The Two Joes,” were also the creators of Little Amal, the giant puppet character of The Walk in 2021. Little Amal was conceived as a character in The Jungle, and I blogged on her and The Walk on 7 October 2022.]

“We know the level of evidence is more than we would need for artists coming from the U.K., for example,” Kriegsmann concurred. Obstacles to artist mobility, he said, stem from a “lack of predictability” around how the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) processing center “is going to receive an application and what materials are going to satisfy their investigation. And of course, that varies wildly between white and Global Majority countries.”

For some presenters, these political pressures date back to changes in U.S. immigration policies post-Sept. 11. “It’s an ebb and flow,” said Lori N. Jones, director of programming and operations at Fairfield University’s Quick Center for the Arts [Fairfield, Connecticut], “and it tends to run in alignment with our government at the time.” 

Others point to more recent changes, noting that policies set during Trump’s first administration lingered, even if unofficially, into the Biden years. Kriegsmann recounted that in the 2025 Under the Radar Festival [4-24 January 2025], the January production of Iranian playwright Amir Reza Koohestani’s [b. 1978] Blind Runner [created 2023; at St. Ann’s Warehouse, 8-24 January 2025]—which included an Iranian cast and production team—encountered heightened scrutiny because the U.S. held outdated information about ensemble members’ military service in Iran. Eventually the company landed safely in New York, but without their stage manager.

This intense, country-specific vetting was expanded by the first Trump administration, the most infamous example of which was Trump’s 2017 ban on U.S. entry for residents of seven Muslim-majority countries (recently expanded to include a dozen more countries in the Global South). For Kriegsmann, the restrictions got to the point that “all of a sudden, we weren’t even able to consider artists from certain countries. That was unprecedented.”

[On 27 January 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13769 banning entry to the U.S. by residents of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Legal challenges were instituted and succeeded, and Trump superseded the ban with revised orders to include additional countries with full or partial bans, which were also challenged in court. Ultimately, the Supreme Court affirmed the orders, which remained in effect until President Joe Biden issued a proclamation revoking the Trump travel bans on 20 January 2021.

[On 20 January 2025, newly reelected Trump signed Executive Order 14161 restricting entry to the U.S. from Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, as well as partially restricting entry from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. As of late August 2025, there are legal challenges pending against the implementation and enforcement of EO 14161, but none has curtailed its being enforced.]

These issues persisted even after Trump left office in 2021. Jay Wegman [b. 1964], executive director of NYU-Skirball, recalled that when Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen [b. 1980] brought a dance ensemble in March 2024, one Iranian-born ensemble member, despite holding a European passport, was denied entry to the U.S. while other company members were allowed through.

Last May, seeing widespread problems like these, Tamizdat submitted a public comment to the State Department protesting continued use of an intrusive questionnaire they described as “extreme vetting.” The questionnaire, Tamizdat wrote, “is predominantly used by non-immigrant visa units at U.S. consulates in Africa and the Middle East, where its use rarely correlates to legitimate security concerns. . . [.] The questions requiring applicants to provide all social media handles, phone numbers, and email addresses used during the last five years chill free speech.”

Global Politics and the Visa Pipeline

This “extreme vetting” form is just one of many types of evidence international artists must provide to enter the U.S.—evidence that ranges from proof that they don’t plan to overstay temporary visas to proof that their work is widely lauded or culturally unique. Current visa classifications, established in the Immigration Act of 1990, are not all created equal. There’s the O-1 [see “Immigrant Imaginations 1” (28 August 2025)], for artists of so-called “extraordinary ability”—a phrase so memorable it has inspired at least two plays, Saviana Stanescu’s [b. 1967; Bucharest, Romania] 2008 Aliens with Extraordinary Skills [premièred off-Broadway at the Julia Miles Theater (WP Theater, formerly the Women’s Project) on 22 September 2008] and Chloé Hung’s [b. ca. 1991] Alien of Extraordinary Ability [workshopped  at the Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles, 2020], which had a reading at Playwrights’ Center in March. To obtain an O-1 visa (for individuals) or a P-1B (for groups [members of entertainment groups that are internationally recognized]), artists or their presenters must submit dossiers of reviews, awards, and other forms of recognition that will be legible to a USCIS employee unlikely to have a background in the performing arts.

Then there are P-3 visas for artistic groups showing “culturally unique” work. According to immigration lawyer Jonathan Ginsburg [b. 1951], who negotiated the implementation of the O and P visa system in the early 1990s, the P-3 created better access for artists without high-profile English-language press. “That was designed to ensure that we had broader cultural flows of art into the U.S., not just from Western Europe,” Ginsburg said.

Yet the designation “culturally unique” can be even more subjective than “extraordinary ability.” Case in point: In 2009, the USCIS’s Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) rejected an application by L.A.’s Skirball Cultural Center to bring the klezmer-Latin fusion band Orquesta Kef from Argentina, claiming that “fusion” was not considered “culturally unique.” Though their denial was reversed a month later, the performance was not rescheduled. In 2012, the USCIS and DHS [Department of Homeland Security] Administrative Appeals Office issued a new binding precedent decision addressing the term “culturally unique” and its significance in the adjudication of petitions for performing artists—good news, but a bit too late for that performing arts season.

Organized labor, too, has long played a role in the USCIS visa process. As far back as the early 1990s, Ginsburg represented the arts community in negotiations with unions seeking to limit visas as a means of protecting American jobs. Artists or their petitioners must typically conduct a “labor consultation” and obtain a letter from the relevant union (often Actors’ Equity) declaring non-objection to the artists’ appearance in the States. While the website “Artists from Abroad,” a commonly used resource guide for international artists, states that AEA charges $250 for such letters, Equity spokesperson David Levy [b. ca. 1978] told American Theatre that letters have been provided free of charge since at least 2017. Ralph Sevush [b. ca. 1962], attorney and Dramatists’ Guild executive director of business affairs, confirmed that the Guild considers O-1 applicants’ requests for non-objection letters, but declined to comment further on the process.

State Department data reflect enormous variations in results for artistic petitioners from countries in the Global South and Global North. In fiscal year 2023, the U.S. granted 2,747 O-1 visas to petitioners from Great Britain and Northern Ireland and 848 to those from France, while granting—for instance—just 139 O-1 visas to petitioners from Nigeria, eight to petitioners from Iraq, and two to petitioners from Syria.

[“Global North” is not a geographic term but a concept referring to wealthy, economically powerful countries, primarily in North America and Europe, along with others like Australia, Japan, and South Korea, which dominate global wealth and control manufacturing.]

These numbers don’t tell the whole story. For one thing, publicly available State Department data do not include refusal rates by country: We know that two Syrian petitions were granted, but not how many artists from Syria were invited by U.S.-based presenters to apply.

Even that number, though, would hide as much as it reveals. Since even the most globally ambitious presenters take shifting international dynamics into account when planning their seasons, anxiety about securing travel for artists from the Global South and Middle East can inhibit those invitations in the first place. Wegman admitted that he thinks twice before inviting artists from “any of those countries that were on Trump’s ‘Muslim no-fly list.’ Look at the way he’s involved himself at the Kennedy Center—it does play into my head,” he said. “There’s a very interesting company from Bolivia. Is it worth the trouble of bringing them, not knowing what the political impression of that country is going to be in a year?”

Big-picture electoral politics and financial forecasts can also play roles in which artists make it to U.S. stages. In previous decades, multiple presenters said, it was common to seek assistance from congressional reps when the visa process stalled at USCIS or in consular offices. Now that support is less forthcoming and less powerful, they say. Last year, when Jones sought to bring a Senegalese ensemble to perform at the Quick and struggled to book embassy interviews for the company members, Connecticut’s elected officials had limited capacity to help. “What once felt like an empowered opportunity for them to support what we wanted to accomplish, international exchange,” she said, has diminished in recent years. “It feels like their hands have been tied.”

Such assistance is called for because of the U.S.’s frequently opaque, highly expensive visa system. USCIS raises fees regularly, and the system’s complicated requirements compel many organizations to hire lawyers to put together their visa petitions, putting small nonprofits and individuals at a financial disadvantage. Wegman estimated that NYU-Skirball spends $10,000 on visa-related expenses for each international production they present. In 2024, a rate hike made increases ranging from $50 to over $500 a pop, depending on visa type, and extended response times for “premium processing”—often the only way to ensure petitions are reviewed in time for performance dates. Premium is exponentially pricier than standard processing, making it, Sayegh said, “a very high financial burden for having a diverse range of artists from less affluent countries.”

That’s not the only way money talks. As Sayegh pointed out, new tariff policies may affect artists from different countries in different and unequal ways, dependent on each country’s trade agreement with the U.S. Here too, money—or lack thereof—might determine the kinds of work that presenters invite in the first place, another indirect constraint on freedom of artistic expression.

Free speech constraints can emerge indirectly too. Kriegsmann noted that decreased funding for the arts can prompt an institution like Under the Radar to seek out private and corporate funds. With Trump’s executive orders prohibiting DEI and so-called “gender ideology,” corporations may be less willing to support challenging and subversive art, creating de facto limits on which art finds a platform. He added: “We’re not going to stop, but moving forward with challenging voices or artists that are voices of dissent, or thought that is adverse to conservative thinking, could potentially end the life of the festival.”

Facing the System Alone 

Meanwhile, artists who come to the U.S. to stay long-term face additional hurdles, ones not always understood by their American theatre colleagues and employers, which, like the obstacles touring artists encounter, often reflect U.S. positioning in the world at large. Argentine playwright Francisco Mendoza [see “Immigrant Imaginations 1”], who has been working in the U.S. for years, noted that immigrant artists face daily questions to which U.S. citizens and permanent residents may not be attuned.

“When I was on temporary visas, I often found myself being asked to take responsibility for the future,” Mendoza said. “Looking for jobs on my OPT or O-1, prospective employers would ask me: ‘What happens when your visa expires?’ I don’t know! I don’t know the future. I know that I’ll try my hardest to get a new visa; I know if I get this job, it will make that process easier. Would you ask any other candidates to guarantee you that they will never have to leave the job? Would you single any of them out for anything that could potentially impact their ability to stay? No, because it would be discrimination.”

[OPT refers to Optional Practical Training, a program for international students in the U.S. under an F-1 visa, a non-immigrant visa that allows foreign nationals to enter the United States as full-time students at academic institutions. It’s a form of temporary work authorization for F-1 visa students to gain practical experience directly related to their major area of study. Students must apply for OPT through USCIS.]

Immigrant artists are often asked to fight bureaucratic battles that can become deeply personal. Director Hamid Dehghani [Iranian; b. 1984] explained that, after receiving an MFA in directing from Northwestern University [Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb], he navigated a seemingly endless series of hurdles to continue directing in Chicago: years of requesting letters of support and advance contracts to prove he had U.S.-based work and accepting underpaid jobs to prove he was in demand. “It’s something that becomes part of your identity, this visa,” he said.

Even if Equity letters are free of charge for artists touring to the U.S., the union has posed other hurdles to immigrant artists, such as those faced by Canadian actor Jessica Wu. After graduating from NYU with a degree in musical theatre, Wu embarked on a successful acting career that included appearances on Broadway and at the Kennedy Center—yet each time she received a job offer, Equity informed her that, despite holding a legal O-1 visa to work in the U.S., union bylaws prevented her from accepting Equity roles.

“I’m legally allowed to work these jobs,” Wu said, so “why is the union I’ve been paying into trying to tell me I can’t take these hard-earned jobs?” In 2021, following years of research and advocacy, Wu ran as a delegate to the AEA’s national convention, where she proposed a successful resolution to eliminate AEA policy language limiting participation by members who are not citizens or permanent residents.

Wu’s friends and colleagues were overjoyed at the news. “I’m AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islanders], and because of the nature of a lot of the shows I did, I had a lot of friends who are from different countries, a lot on artist visas, who would go to an audition, get hired by casting just like anybody else, and then receive communications from the union saying: You can’t do it,” she said. A rejection like this can be terrifying. “If a union is telling you you’re not allowed to do this, there’s that threat of deportation always. It ended up forcing a lot of really amazing talented people out, denying them further career advancement, and putting an end to any intentions of immigration.”

All the presenters, producers, and artists who spoke to American Theatre agreed that the U.S. system is confusing, expensive, and dangerous. The confusion is no accident, said Mendoza.

“I think Americans often feel justified in discriminating against immigrants, or at least don’t feel compelled to stand up for us, because there’s this underlying assumption that no one forced us to be here—that there’s nothing inherently wrong with putting Americans first,” he said. “With which I would agree—except, of course, that America is the so-called ‘leader of the free world’ and puts itself first throughout the entire world. Immigrants often come here from countries whose political and economic systems have been manipulated and destabilized by American foreign policy. We are here precisely because America puts itself first.”

In putting “America first,” though, Siyanko reflected, the U.S. downplays the value of culture as a form of diplomacy or even soft power, the way many other countries do. The U.S. once did so as well: Think of the U.S.-sponsored Cold War-era tours by Alvin Ailey [1931-89; American dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater] or exhibitions of Jackson Pollock [1912-56; American painter; major figure in the abstract expressionist movement; renowned for his “drip technique” of pouring or splashing paint onto a horizontal surface]; this was America attempting to demonstrate its democratic ideals by showcasing a Black choreographer’s dances and abstract artists’ freedom of expression abroad.

Stakes are high and implications are uncertain everywhere. While Siyanko worries for SenCirk, director Andrew Schneider [b. 1981] (best known for YOUARENOWHERE [see “‘Design & Tech: The Magic Of Design,’ Introduction & Article 1” (9 September 2021)] and the trilogy of mind-bending, tech-heavy works that followed it) said that he’s scheduled to perform a world-premiere commission at Jacob’s Pillow [the world premiere of HERE, 16-20 July 2025] this summer with two international collaborators whose travel to the U.S. could be denied at any point.

What can the American theatre community do? A baseline would be for American artists and producers to educate themselves about U.S. visa regulations so that immigrant artists don’t have to bear the burden of briefing every potential employer they meet. “We might not be powerful enough to change the visa system,” said Dehghani, “but for our American theatre co-workers to know what we are struggling with is so helpful.”

More broadly, standing up for artist visas means standing up for the art form itself. Said Sayegh, “Every artist that we are advocating for, we are starting with not just why this piece, why this artist is important, but why theatre is important.” 

Kriegsmann agreed, saying, “I truly believe the answer lies in being louder and more challenging. We have to prove the distinction of what the performing arts alone can do, we have to be brave about what the response is going to be—and we have to act collectively.”

[Miriam Felton-Dansky (she/her) is a theatre critic based at Bard College.]