The Impact of Visa Crackdowns on World Music in the US

On the public radio show, The World today there was a good segment on the difficulties and less than warm reception from the authorities that international musical acts are facing these days and how many are really questioning whetehr it is worth the headaches:

The Spanish-Arabic ensemble Radio Tarifa doesn't have good memories of its North American tour last year, at least not the US part of it. Some of the members of Radio Tarifa are of Middle Eastern descent. One night in Cleveland, authorities searched Radio Tarifa's dressing room at the concert venue. Another time, police showed up at Radio Tarifa's rehearsal space because someone in the neighborhood had complained about hearing "Arabic music."

When Radio Tarifa arrived in Toronto for the Canadian leg of their tour, they were welcomed with comparitively open arms. They responded with what some critics have called their best concert ever.

Radio Tarifa is only one group of foreign musicians who have had problems performing stateside since September 11. But at least they got in the country. The way the US government views it, non-American musicians are no different from any other foreigner. The government is especially alert to musicians coming from one of the state department's seven countries they label as sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lybia, Sudan and North Korea.

It's not the denial of visas (which are not that frequent), but the possibility of visa denials that is creating the problems:

Scott Southard [of International Music Network]: My company brings about thirty different international tours into the country each year, which results in 200, 250 individual performers and technical support being approved for entry into the US. [edit] It's a simple business decision on our part. Are we going to take the financial risks of producing a tour and the outcome of those risks is affected by the difficulty of the immigration process. If we feel if there's a significant risk that we can't get an artist approved, of course we're not going to try.

I think we're all losing here.