In November, agents for the Grammy-winning African guitar band Tinariwen booked the group on an extensive North American tour for this year, and began to prepare their visa applications.
But by December, those plans were dashed when the Trump administration announced travel restrictions on 19 countries, including Mali, where most of Tinariwen’s members are from. The tour, set for theaters and clubs throughout the United States and Canada, was canceled, and Patrick Votan, the group’s manager, said he had no expectation that anything would change in the near future.
“It’s completely hopeless now to tour in the U.S.,” Votan said in an interview. “There’s not really any solution to come back again.”
The travel bans — along with escalating costs and delays in the always-fraught visa application process — represent a looming crisis for the American performing arts sector, as many overseas musicians, theater companies and others face new and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to travel. Some, assessing the risks, are electing to avoid coming here altogether, according to talent agents and the American promoters and producers who are now contemplating holes in their calendars.
The federal government says it is protecting American citizens from danger. On his first day in office a year ago, President Trump issued an executive order aimed at “aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology, or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.”
In a series of acts since, the administration has put severe travel and immigration restrictions on dozens of countries, including full bans on Cuba, Haiti, Niger, Laos, Sierra Leone and Syria, along with people whose documents were issued by the Palestinian Authority. Only narrow exceptions may apply.
Last week, the State Department said it would soon halt processing of immigrant visa applications from citizens of 75 countries, though full details were not announced.
In an additional complication for performers, the processing of petitions by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or U.S.C.I.S. — the first step in most performers’ visa application process, has become much more strict. According to one recently instituted rule, the agency is now putting a “hold” on its processing if an applicant was born in any of the 40 or so countries targeted by the administration, regardless of where an applicant has citizenship.
The agency “has paused all adjudications for aliens from high-risk countries while U.S.C.I.S. works to ensure that all aliens from these countries are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” Matthew Tragesser, a spokesman for U.S.C.I.S., said in a statement. After vetting by the agency, the State Department processes visa applications.
But for foreign artists and the American producers who are looking to work with them, these changes are beginning to wreak havoc. Last week, the Under the Radar theater festival in New York announced it had canceled an event, just days before its intended presentation, that was expected to be one of its highlights this year: “12 Last Songs,” an immersive performance by the British troupe Quarantine, which the festival was presenting in cooperation with La MaMa and the Working Theater.
The group’s visas have not been approved. Tommy Kriegsmann, the festival’s co-producer, said in an interview that no explanation had been given, but the festival’s lawyer believed it was because two crew members — both British citizens and passport holders, Kriegsmann said — were born in Nigeria. That could have triggered the agency pause, since Nigeria is one of the countries with partial restrictions by the administration.
Under the Radar spent a year planning Quarantine’s performance, and its cancellation will cost the festival $150,000 to $200,000, which it cannot recover, Kriegsmann said.
“It’s an unbelievable mess,” he added, “and no one can provide an answer.”
Problems like these were the talk of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals conference in New York last week. Each January, thousands of agents and presenters gather there to book their annual calendars and share intelligence about the climate, which has been shaky for years but is now, many said, in a state of crisis.
Matthew Covey, a lawyer who specializes in immigration applications for performing artists, told attendees in a speech that he expects a 30 percent decline this year of international performers coming to the United States, compared to 2024.
In a subsequent interview, Covey called that figure a rough estimate based on information from his firm, CoveyLaw. For many of the artists he represents, he said, touring in the United States has long been expensive and cumbersome, but in the last nine months or so, he said, there as been “a collapse of the system.”
“We are seeing clear signs that international artists are turning away from the U.S. market in droves,” Covey said, “choosing to tour where they can travel more freely, feel safe and welcomed, and can hope to at least break even.”
One of the biggest hindrances, Covey and others said, is the cost and processing time for applications, which have both ballooned in recent years. What once took a few months can now take up to a year, effectively forcing any touring artist to pay extra for “expedited” handling. It’s not unusual, Covey said, for ensembles to pay $6,000 simply for visa processing — to say nothing of the growing costs of travel itself.
The price of visa processing has been steadily rising for years, regardless of the party in office. A big jump came in May 2024, during the Biden administration.
The effect of the bans is not yet clear, and some venues seem unaffected. A spokeswoman for Carnegie Hall, for example, which hosts orchestras and ensembles from all over the world, said it has not had any cancellations related to the ban. Artists who received visas before the recent changes can still use them to tour.
But some foreign artists, even from nations unaffected by the bans, may simply be choosing to avoid the United States. That may be out of fear of being questioned at the border for any political opinions they have expressed on social media — or simply because the changes have been so fluid and unpredictable, agents and promoters say.
“It’s about economic risk, and the reality that the rules are only the rules for today,” said Shanta Thake, the chief artistic officer of Lincoln Center and one of the directors of Globalfest, an annual festival in New York of performers from around the world.
Jesús Alemañy of the Cuban band Cubanisimo, which toured in the United States in the 1990s — when relations between the United States and Cuba were beginning to thaw — will avoid American venues for an upcoming 30th-anniversary outing. Although he is now a citizen of Mexico, his status as a person born in Cuba may put visa application at risk, said his agent, David Gaar.
In an interview, Alemañy, a trumpeter and bandleader, said he was saddened by the recent policies, which seem to be putting at risk an era of cultural exchange that allowed his band to come to America in the first place.
“This is something crazy,” Alemañy said. “This is something that is taking to people the opportunity to be more educated and learn about the root of music that has been very important all over the world.”
He added, “Why isolate the American people from this opportunity?”
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
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