An Australian comedian has canceled her visit to the U.S. over concerns that she could be targeted at the border because of her past jokes about Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Alice Fraser, who has appeared on the BBC and undertaken previous international tours, had planned to come to New York City in May to promote her book, according to The Guardian. She was going to apply for an 0-1B visa, which allows individuals with “extraordinary ability” in the arts to live and work in America.
However, she sought the input of an immigration lawyer after seeing that people had been denied entry to the U.S. for criticism of the president.
Some people have even been detained while trying to take a vacation.
“I asked [the lawyer] what I thought was a ridiculous question—that I do political satire and have a fair few jokes floating around on Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and whether that would be a risk,” she told The Guardian.
While Fraser thought she was being “paranoid,” the lawyer told her that increased scrutiny of those entering the U.S. was a real concern. The authorities were likely to Google her, and there was a possibility it could pose a risk.
Fraser said that she might have been more open to accepting that risk if she didn’t have two children to take care of.
“The vision of me being there with a baby strapped to me and held up and hassled, or worse,” she said, “I’m not up for that.”
She had made jokes about Trump on publicly visible podcasts. “I wouldn’t take an IOU from Trump if he wrote it on the money he owed me,” she said in 2020.
This week, as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Fraser appeared on an episode for the satirical podcast “A Rational Fear,” The Guardian reported. It was billed as a “how to evade deportation” special.
Fraser said she will reevaluate visiting the U.S. “when it’s no longer reasonable for a visa lawyer to say I should purge my social media before I go there because a joke about Elon Musk might be considered hostile to the nation.”
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