Visa fee hikes and delays hinder international artists from touring the United States

NEW YORK (AP) — In New York City, spirited badge-holders and independent music fans wove in and out of 150-person capacity clubs filled with groups from around the globe.

A Japanese rock band opened for a German post-punk trio followed by an alternative group from New Zealand. And that was just day one at the New Colossus Festival, held last week.

The six-day event takes its name from the poem cast on the Statue of Liberty, viewed as a welcome message for new immigrants: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses….”

Now in its sixth year, 196 artists were scheduled to perform, more than half from outside the United States. But New Colossus may be an exception, not the rule, for international artists hoping to perform in the U.S. In the last few years, the process has grown much more arduous and expensive.

“It’s already at the maximum level of difficulty that we can rationalize,” said Mischa Dempsey, frontperson for the thrilling Montreal band Knitting, who performed at New Colossus and described the process as “labor intensive.”

“I can’t even think about it getting worse.”

On April 1, 2024, the USCIS introduced a visa fee increase, raising the cost from $460 to over $1,615 per musician application, the first bump since 2016. According to the USCIS website, the increase allows the organization to “recover our operating costs more fully and support timely processing of new applications.”

Nearly a year later, “we are seeing the opposite,” immigration attorney Gabriel Castro said. “We are seeing cases actually slow down.”

The USCIS did not respond to an email from the AP.

Changes to the system have caused delays. According to Tamizdat, a nonprofit that advocates for international artist mobility, all visa petitions are now filed through a centralized service center in Texas and are randomly divvyed up to preexisting California and Vermont service centers.

The result has been slowed processing times. Matthew Covey, an immigration attorney and Tamizdat's executive director, says Vermont has gone from one month to three. In California, it previously took two to four months, but now, it's eight.

“Nobody’s filing petitions long enough in advance to sustain an eight-month delay,” says Covey. “You got a 50/50 chance of it being done in a reasonable amount of time or having to pay an extra $2,800 to expedite it.”

Castro says small and mid-tier artists don’t have the luxury of spending nearly $3,000 on expedited processing or booking tour dates eight months in advance. “And you have to have those tour dates before you apply for the visa," he adds.

“It’s just more expensive than ever to try and do a tour in the U.S. And that’s a problem,” says Jen Jacobsen, executive director at The Artist Rights Alliance. “And I wouldn’t say the fee change by itself has had the impact — it’s a combination of inefficiencies and delays.”

The headlines are frequent: The K-pop group KARD canceled its 2025 U.S. tour due to visa issues. So did the Canadian metal band Respire. The up-and-coming Swedish rapper Bladee delayed his 2024 tour for similar issues. In the film world, Iranian co-directors Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani took home an Oscar for their animated short, “In the Shadow of the Cypress” — after arriving in Los Angeles just hours before, due to visa delays.

All international musicians require work authorization to perform in the U.S. There are scarce exemptions available to only a few, like the Visa Waiver Program, which is often used at South by Southwest.

“The safest approach is always to get a ... visa,” says Castro.

Jacobsen says “there’s definitely a buzz about whether touring in the U.S. is still a good economic option” for these artists.

“I’m hearing more and more frequently from artists who are just like, ‘I’m going to take a break from the U.S. for a while. It’s not a return on my investment. It’s not worth it,’” says Covey.

Delays and fee increases disproportionally affect “world music artists, jazz, indie bands who are developing,” says Covey, as well as “artists outside of Europe who have government support … if they come in from the Global South, they generally are not going to have a lot of government funding to cover these kinds of costs.”

New Colossus' lineups have benefited from governments who support local artists. “Countries like Germany, England,Canada, France, Ireland and Wales have funding bodies that the bands apply for,” says Steven Matrick, one of the New Colossus Festival founders. “They recognize our festival as a showcase festival. And the bands get funded to come here by those bodies.”

But still, that does not make them immune to last-minute cancellations. This year, artists from Ireland, Scotland and Italy canceled. A band from Paraguay was held up by visa delays; they arrived after their second scheduled performance straight from the airport. Hiçamahiç, a band from Istanbul, had to cancel entirely.

In a statement, Hiçamahiç explained that two band members couldn’t get visa appointments in time, despite working with an intermediary agency. “The U.S. is currently issuing standard visa interview dates for Turkish citizens nearly 1,000 days later, which feels like an elitist form of discrimination. We are deeply disappointed by this situation,” they wrote. “We don’t think we are any different from a citizen of the U.K. or Germany.”

Matrick says, “We have probably 10 cancellations a year, with people that don’t get the funding to purchase visas,” or their visas are not processed in time.

Castro reminds that the loss of international talent stateside is not just a cultural one, but economic. “It’s a loss for the venues ... the bars, the parking lots,” he lists.

“Based on the last Trump administration, what we saw over the course of the four years were increasing problems with consular process,” Covey says. “The delay times increased. The number of errors increased. Obviously, the scrutiny ... increased."

“We’re expecting that we will probably start seeing increased delays in the visa processing at U.S. embassies," he adds. And in a period of global conflict, “your indie rock band is really not priority.”

Castro said it is early to make predictions “of what this is going to look like in the future ... But that doesn’t mean that changes in immigration, generally, can affect these visas tangentially. The slow-down in immigration processes is a slow down for everyone.”

“Some of the policies about clamping down on illegal immigration sometimes flow into areas — unintended areas, perhaps — but areas that can impact legal immigration,” says Jacobsen. “If we want a rich palette of artistry to be here, we have to make it a welcoming environment for them.”

There are other potential impacts: At the end of last month, the U.S. government ordered a visa ban on transgender athletes looking to enter the U.S. for sports events. “They’re just talking about enforcing it on athletes, but it doesn’t take very much to imagine them enforcing that on anyone,” says Covey. "I’m concerned that the political agendas of the current administration could impact which artists get visas and which don’t.”

Dempsey, of the band Knitting, said: “Three of us are gender nonconforming and I think more than anything, we're scared of what it’s going to be like in the States, what it’s going to be like to cross the border."

Willem Smit from the band Personal Trainer performs during The New Colossus Festival on Friday, March 7, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Lille Venn performs during The New Colossus Festival on Friday, March 7, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

The band Mellt perform during The New Colossus Festival on Friday, March 7, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Levin Goes Lightly perform during The New Colossus Festival on Friday, March 7, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

The band knitting perform during The New Colossus Festival on Friday, March 7, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

U.S. President Donald Trump says Iran has proposed negotiations after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic as an ongoing crackdown on demonstrators has led to hundreds of deaths.

Trump said late Sunday that his administration was in talks to set up a meeting with Tehran, but cautioned that he may have to act first as reports mount of increasing deaths and the government continues to arrest protesters.

“The meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting. But a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night.

Iran did not acknowledge Trump’s comments immediately. It has previously warned the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America uses force to protect demonstrators.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has accurately reported on past unrest in Iran, gave the death toll. It relies on supporters in Iran cross checking information. It said at least 544 people have been killed so far, including 496 protesters and 48 people from the security forces. It said more than 10,600 people also have been detained over the two weeks of protests.

With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. Iran’s government has not offered overall casualty figures.

The Latest:

A witness told the AP that the streets of Tehran empty at the sunset call to prayers each night.

Part of that stems from the fear of getting caught in the crackdown. Police sent the public a text message that warned: “Given the presence of terrorist groups and armed individuals in some gatherings last night and their plans to cause death, and the firm decision to not tolerate any appeasement and to deal decisively with the rioters, families are strongly advised to take care of their youth and teenagers.”

Another text, addressed “Dear parents,” which claimed to come from the intelligence arm of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, also directly warned people not to take part in demonstrations.

The witness spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing crackdown.

—- By Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Iran drew tens of thousands of pro-government demonstrators to the streets Monday in a show of power after nationwide protests challenging the country’s theocracy.

Iranian state television showed images of demonstrators thronging Tehran toward Enghelab Square in the capital.

It called the demonstration an “Iranian uprising against American-Zionist terrorism,” without addressing the underlying anger in the country over the nation’s ailing economy. That sparked the protests over two weeks ago.

State television aired images of such demonstrations around the country, trying to signal it had overcome the protests, as claimed by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi earlier in the day.

China says it opposes the use of force in international relations and expressed hope the Iranian government and people are “able to overcome the current difficulties and maintain national stability.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Monday that Beijing “always opposes interference in other countries’ internal affairs, maintains that the sovereignty and security of all countries should be fully protected under international law, and opposes the use or threat of use of force in international relations.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz condemned “in the strongest terms the violence that the leadership in Iran is directing against its own people.”

He said it was a sign of weakness rather than strength, adding that “this violence must end.”

Merz said during a visit to India that the demonstrators deserve “the greatest respect” for the courage with which “they are resisting the disproportional, brutal violence of Iranian security forces.”

He said: “I call on the Iranian leadership to protect its population rather than threatening it.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman on Monday suggested that a channel remained open with the United States.

Esmail Baghaei made the comment during a news conference in Tehran.

“It is open and whenever needed, through that channel, the necessary messages are exchanged,” he said.

However, Baghaei said such talks needed to be “based on the acceptance of mutual interests and concerns, not a negotiation that is one-sided, unilateral and based on dictation.”

The semiofficial Fars news agency in Iran, which is close to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, on Monday began calling out Iranian celebrities and leaders on social media who have expressed support for the protests over the past two weeks, especially before the internet was shut down.

The threat comes as writers and other cultural leaders were targeted even before protests. The news agency highlighted specific celebrities who posted in solidarity with the protesters and scolded them for not condemning vandalism and destruction to public property or the deaths of security forces killed during clashes. The news agency accused those celebrities and leaders of inciting riots by expressing their support.

Canada said it “stands with the brave people of Iran” in a statement on social media that strongly condemned the killing of protesters during widespread protests that have rocked the country over the past two weeks.

“The Iranian regime must halt its horrific repression and intimidation and respect the human rights of its citizens,” Canada’s government said on Monday.

Iran’s foreign minister claimed Monday that “the situation has come under total control” after a bloody crackdown on nationwide protests in the country.

Abbas Araghchi offered no evidence for his claim.

Araghchi spoke to foreign diplomats in Tehran. The Qatar-funded Al Jazeera satellite news network, which has been allowed to work despite the internet being cut off in the country, carried his remarks.

Iran’s foreign minister alleged Monday that nationwide protests in his nation “turned violent and bloody to give an excuse” for U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene.

Abbas Araghchi offered no evidence for his claim, which comes after over 500 have been reported killed by activists -- the vast majority coming from demonstrators.

Araghchi spoke to foreign diplomats in Tehran. The Qatar-funded Al Jazeera satellite news network, which has been allowed to work despite the internet being cut off in the country, carried his remarks.

Iran has summoned the British ambassador over protesters twice taking down the Iranian flag at their embassy in London.

Iranian state television also said Monday that it complained about “certain terrorist organization that, under the guise of media, spread lies and promote violence and terrorism.” The United Kingdom is home to offices of the BBC’s Persian service and Iran International, both which long have been targeted by Iran.

A huge crowd of demonstrators, some waving the flag of Iran, gathered Sunday afternoon along Veteran Avenue in LA’s Westwood neighborhood to protest against the Iranian government. Police eventually issued a dispersal order, and by early evening only about a hundred protesters were still in the area, ABC7 reported.

Los Angeles is home to the largest Iranian community outside of Iran.

Los Angeles police responded Sunday after somebody drove a U-Haul box truck down a street crowded with the the demonstrators, causing protesters to scramble out of the way and then run after the speeding vehicle to try to attack the driver. A police statement said one person was hit by the truck but nobody was seriously hurt.

The driver, a man who was not identified, was detained “pending further investigation,” police said in a statement Sunday evening.

Shiite Muslims hold placards and chant slogans during a protest against the U.S. and show solidarity with Iran in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

Activists carrying a photograph of Reza Pahlavi take part in a rally supporting protesters in Iran at Lafayette Park, across from the White House, in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Activists take part in a rally supporting protesters in Iran at Lafayette Park, across from the White House in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Protesters burn the Iranian national flag during a rally in support of the nationwide mass demonstrations in Iran against the government in Paris, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)