A comprehensive immigration reform bill passed by the US Senate last week stands to make it easier for foreign artists to visit the country. The 1,200-page bill, which offers a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, also requires the government to process artists’ visa requests within one month of their initial filing. Under the current system, artists can wait up to six months for a visa and must pay a fee of $1,225 to receive expedited service.
“This provision assures you get a decisive decision that would allow a non-profit arts organisation to plan whether they can expect to have an artist visit,” says Narric W. Rome, the senior director of federal affairs and arts education at Americans for the Arts, which has lobbied for more efficient visa processing for artists. The amendment is co-sponsored by the Senators Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah. The bill currently awaits a vote in the House of Representatives.
The passage of the Arts Require Timely Service (ARTS) Act, part of the immigration bill, “would be huge”, says Tom Finkelpearl, the director of the Queens Museum in New York. The amendment would enable museums to schedule foreign artists to give lectures, teach courses and complete residencies more easily. The Queens Museum’s artists-in-residence, for example, receive only three months’ notice that they have been accepted into the programme and “that’s not a lot of time to get a visa”, Finkelpearl says.
Courtesy of The Art Newspaper, Julia Halperin