A growing number of international artists has been rethinking or even canceling their U.S. tours amid rising costs and visa issues. Late last week, Canadian band Shred Kelly canceled their U.S. shows, including a stop in Portland. British singer FKA Twigs also announced in April they would not be making an appearance at Coachella and canceled their American tour. Both artists cited ongoing visa issues as the reason for not performing in the states. Alex Ashley is a journalist and musician who reported on this story for Rolling Stone. He joins us to share about the challenges artists face when wanting to tour the U.S. and more.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. A growing number of international artists have been rethinking or even canceling their U.S. tours in light of rising costs and visa issues. Last week, the Canadian band Shred Kelly canceled their U.S. shows, which were going to include a stop in Portland. The British singer FKA twigs also announced in April they would not be making an appearance at Coachella and canceled their American tour. Both artists cited visa issues as their reasons.
Alex Ashley is a journalist and musician who reported on this for Rolling Stone recently. He joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Alexy Ashley: Yeah, good to be with you, Dave.
Miller: Your article focuses on the challenges that performing artists are facing now under the second Trump administration. But you note in detail that it was already really hard before Trump took office again in January, that we were already one of the most expensive, paperwork heavy, inflexible, and unpredictable countries for touring artists to enter. So I want to start there. If I’m a Canadian band, or Spanish flamenco dancer, and I want to perform in the U.S., where do I begin?
Ashley: To your point, a lot of this predates the current political moment. There still was a process, there’s a filing fee, there’s a union letter that you have to get from an American labor union, there’s a processing time of several months. You can pay to have that processing expedited. It’s gonna cost you something to the tune of like $2,800. And it’s just very, very intensive. It’s a bureaucratic gauntlet that is uniquely punishing among developed nations.
And a lot of that was there before. And a lot of it was difficult, especially cost and the lagging processing times were a big challenge in years past.
Miller: You mentioned the union letter. So I have to get an American labor union to say that I’m qualified and that I wouldn’t displace American singers or dancers?
Ashley: Yeah, so you have to get a consultation letter from an American labor union, like the American Federation of Musicians or SAG-AFTRA, and they have to provide that. There’s a fee associated with that too. They all charge something. I think it’s a couple hundred bucks or something like that. And that’s on top of having to have a U.S.-based sponsor bring you ‒ an agent or a venue or a manager ‒ have you come here.
So, it’s all very intensive, and there’s a lot of logistics to work out. And at the end of it, you’ve got like a dozen agencies or entities that are all involved just in getting you here to do a job that’s very temporary and very time sensitive.
Miller: You note that that includes in-person meetings at consulates, thousands of dollars of cost, or even more if you want to expedite it. And then you write that even after all of that, when you make it through all of that, more than a few artists you say have watched tours crumble from an airport terminal. What can happen at the last minute?
Ashley: Well at the end of it, officials have the final say in whether or not somebody may or may not enter the country. You may have all the paperwork and you may have gone through all of the rigorous steps to get where you need to be. And then if you answer a question wrong or you betray any sort of uncertainty, it is within that official’s responsibility to say, “hey, I’m not gonna let you come in.”
And that has happened, where folks have been turned away. I can’t remember off the top of my head the examples. Unfortunately, no matter how much effort you put into this process, it appears that at this time it’s still not a guarantee that you’re gonna come in and play the show you need to play.
Miller: How does this compare to the way that other countries broadly approach visiting artists?
Ashley: I think the difference is that a lot of other countries view it for what it is, which is a very vital cultural exchange. They see the value in having artists come to their country and share their music. I think here we tend to view it as a labor thing. Like, “hey, you wanna come and make money and work, then you gotta pay the price.” It’s this sort of lens that we’re putting artists through or viewing artists through that’s just a little different. I think we’re failing to see the immense value.
But it’s not frictionless. I mean, no country wants somebody to come in and say, “hey, I’m gonna play a festival,” and then stay for 30 years. Everybody has laws and rules and guidelines that need to be followed. But I mean, you’ve got the steps in place, and you pay the fee. I think Canada’s like $100, and there’s some exemptions for some shorter tours and things. The UK it amounts to like $155 for a paid engagement visa. It’s not frictionless, but it isn’t anywhere near the sort of punishing process that we have here. And of course, that’s gotten more difficult as time has gone on.
Miller: Right, and we’ll turn to that in just a second. But do you know if this is just a case where this is the intention, in the end, of our country, to make it hard for people to perform here? Or is it the case ‒ before we get to the changes of the Trump administration ‒ is it that case that this is just a kind of bureaucratic creep, that one agency after another adds its layers and you end up with something that no one really planned for, but nobody can change?
Ashley: That’s such a big question, and I think it’s one that’s hard to pin down. What I will say is this political moment we’re in, as volatile as it is, I think it’s touching parts of society that were never maybe meant to be in the blast radius. The arts are not often part of the political conversation this way, but they feel the consequences.
But I do think now, aside from all of the stuff that we talked about, the cost and the time and everything … there was a pretty massive price increase under the Biden administration last spring, that took the visa fees from like $460 to like $615 per application. It was the first increase in a decade, but it was like a 250% increase.
But I think what’s happening now is that there is an element of antagonism that has crept in, that is not just, “hey, this is difficult.” But it’s sort of maybe a little bit purposeful in the sense that … I use the phrase in the article that the red tape has become barbed wire or razor wire. There is a sense that it’s sort of been weaponized, especially this feeling of uncertainty has sort of been weaponized to keep a certain amount of that culture away. I can’t speak to the details of why that feeling exists.
Miller: Let’s stick with some of the “what” then. What has changed in terms of the process that artists face if they want to be able to legally perform here?
Ashley: Well, it used to be, like I said, that there were always costs and slow processing times. Then when Trump first took power in 2017, they had the extreme vetting policies, as his administrative called it, and that was a little bit punishing, especially for artists from the global south. Then we had the price increase last year.
But I think what’s changed most recently is the fact that you can have all of this in place, you can have all the paperwork, and you can have all the visa stuff cared for, and then be turned away. There’s this feeling of uncertainty of like am I gonna sink $10,000 trying to come play and perform in the United States, and then be turned away over some visa issue? That fear and uncertainty I feel is the newest development here. And it’s having in some cases more of a real impact than some of the slow processing times and some of the issues with the visas. Because people are making choices on their own to not even bother.
Like Shred Kelly, they canceled the tour, because even though they had an attorney, I believe, tell them, “you’re good to go, you’ve done your due diligence,” they said, “we don’t want to be in a position where we’re caught off guard.” That is something that I feel is fairly new, especially for artists who have been coming here for a long time.
Miller: Shred Kelly talked to you. They’ve been public about this. Do you have a sense for how many stories like theirs we’re not even hearing?
Ashley: I can’t put a number on it, but what I can tell you is in talking with various attorneys and advocacy groups and tour managers and label contacts and so on and so forth, is that for every Instagram post that you see online of, “hey, I’m sorry, I’ve got to cancel this tour with what is going on in the U.S.,” there’s 10 more, let’s say, that are afraid to even be vocal about it, because they’re afraid that if they say anything that they’re gonna get beat up on later. Maybe it’s gonna make it difficult for them down the road to come in. There’s a sense of palpable fear here that I don’t think has really been an element of this process for international artists coming to the U.S. in the past.
Miller: Then there’s the case of the Mexican band Los Alegres del Barranco. What happened with them?
Ashley: Oh, you’re challenging my memory here. I’ve got to go back and remember.
Miller: From your article, it seems that this is a different case where the band’s visa was denied after the fact because of the content of some of their songs.
Ashley: Oh, that’s right. Yeah.
Miller: So it makes me wonder to what extent are American immigration officials looking at lyrics and performances and saying, “yes, you can come. You’re okay to bring your art to our country. But you are not.”
Ashley: In that case ‒ I just pulled up my notes from writing this article ‒ they had a song. It was perceived as praising a cartel kingpin. And the State Department basically issued some sort of statement saying, “the last thing we need is a welcome mat for people who extol criminals and terrorists.”
The reason I think that’s important is, while that’s one isolated incident, talking with Andrew Cash from the Canadian Independent Music Association, he said something that I won’t forget. He said, “we always knew the U.S. border agents had the ability to look through your phones, see your social media. We’ve never heard of it happening until now.” And so you’ve got artists who clearly have issues with the way that these things are being handled by the current administration. But if they get to the border and somebody goes through their phone and sees that they have been critical of the current administration and of the president, there’s the question of, “will this affect my ability to get into the country and play music?” That’s crazy!
I think that the bigger picture is coming together here for international artists that things are getting a little bit dicier than they’ve had to deal with in the past. It’s not just money or paperwork anymore. This is a real cultural crisis for artists trying to come here and partake in what is the biggest music marketplace in the world.
Miller: You were talking before about just how huge and disruptive that the uncertainty is, and that plenty of would-be visiting artists have been rethinking their plans to come to the U.S. because of fears of what might happen ‒ of being detained or denied entry or caught in some kind of bureaucratic limbo.
I’m wondering if you also heard anyone say that they just don’t want to come to a country that is threatening to turn them into our fifty-first state, say, in the case of Canada, or implementing tariffs that could destroy their economies? I guess the question is not about the friction of the visa system, but if we become a pariah, do people want to come here to perform for us?
Ashley: Yeah, I think that that’s a real tragedy that’s happening, that’s unfolding before our eyes. It’s not just the fact that it’s difficult. Nobody’s arguing that you shouldn’t file some paperwork to get into a country legally, to come and work. But I think that the bigger issue here is this is changing the way that people see the United States when it comes to the sharing of culture. Music is such an important cultural currency, and sometimes it’s the only language that we can share with other people from other places. So, for people and artists to look at the United States and say, “no, I don’t want to be a part of this …”
I’m having trouble remembering right now, but there were a couple of classical performers that are included in the article who had made statements in the past saying “I can’t be a part of this,” and canceled their performances here in the United States because they felt like they were contributing to something that was harmful to others, and they didn’t want to be a part of it, so they canceled their shows. There’s definitely a conscience element to this too, I think.
Miller: And one result ‒ we’ve been focusing so much on the artists themselves and what this means for them ‒ but in terms of American audiences, you’re saying that we are going to miss out on the art and music, the performances from people who are outside of our borders.
Ashley: When we close the border to music, we’re not just keeping others out, we’re shutting ourselves in. I don’t think that’s a place that anybody wants to be, but it sure seems like that’s a potential risk here culturally, if we stop sharing in this cultural exchange.
Miller: Alex Ashley, thanks very much.
Ashley: Thank you, man.
Miller: Alex Ashely is a journalist and musician. He wrote about the huge visa issues that international performing artists are facing recently for Rolling Stone.
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