U.S. Artist Mobility Advocacy Update: Historic Interdepartmental Government Meeting with Performing Arts Visa Working Group
We are very excited to share our update on important U.S. Artist Mobility Advocacy Update in October 2023.
On October 11th, a historic meeting took place that moved forward the effort to reform U.S. immigration policy regarding international performing artists. The interdepartmental meeting was convened as a listening session for the Performing Artist Visa Working Group (PAVWG), an ad hoc coalition of many major U.S. performing arts stakeholders. The session was organized by the League of American Orchestras and Tamizdat, working in collaboration with the Office of Partnership, and Engagement (OPE) at Department Homeland Security (DHS). It brought together key staff from DHS’s Office of Partnership and Engagement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Department of State (DOS). Amongst stakeholders speaking on the call were The American Federation of Musicians, Carnegie Hall, Marauder, Folk Alliance International, and WESTAF. Representatives from the National Endowment for the Arts were also present at the meeting, in a listening capacity.
The purpose of the call was to allow the performing arts sector to articulate the challenges it faces when working with international artists, to identify priority issues that span across government agencies, and to suggest workable solutions to those problems. Solutions recommended included both requests for immediate relief and long term policy reform. Recommendations were based on Tamizdat’s most current Recommendations for Performing Arts Visa Policy. Additionally, the PAVWG expressed its continued interest in partnering with the government agencies in distributing information to our many arts stakeholder members and the broader public via our organizations’ networks and the Artists from Abroad website maintained by the League of American Orchestras.
We are pleased to report that the meeting was extraordinarily productive. The government agency representatives were well prepared for the call, had clearly read and discussed the recommendations in advance, expressed a broad understanding of the economic, cultural, and social impact of the current policies, and voiced a willingness to pursue cooperation with the sector toward specific reforms. Recommendations were discussed in detail, and in the four weeks that followed the meeting, we have already seen significantly increased communication and engagement with our sector toward real actionable solutions.