Someone scanning his or her fingerprints at Newark Liberty International Airport on August 24, 2009 (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Foreign performers hoping to make it to Broadway might soon find less red carpet and more red tape.
Last month, President Donald J. Trump signed a proclamation requiring American employers to pay a $100,000 fee to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations through the H-1B visa program. Codified in 1990, employers previously paid fees less than $10,000.
According to President Trump, “[t]he H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers into the United States to perform additive, high-skilled functions, but it has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.” “The large-scale replacement of American workers through systemic abuse of the program has undermined both our economic and national security,” he insisted, concluding that “[i]t is therefore necessary to impose higher costs on companies seeking to use the H-1B program in order to address the abuse of that program while still permitting companies to hire the best of the best temporary foreign workers.”
While foreign performers often secure work visas to perform on Broadway through the separate O-1B visa program established for workers with extraordinary abilities in the arts, President Trump’s recent changes to the H-1B visa program could complicate matters for them.
In an effort to evade the higher fee, “[t]here will be more demand for O-1s, though not necessarily from qualified people, as it is definitely not the case that everyone who qualifies for an H-1B would also qualify for an O-1,” predicted immigration attorney Karin Wolman. The criteria for the two work visas are different.
George Lake, a London-based immigration attorney, surmised that the “O-1B approval rates might become lower, but this would likely be because people who should be applying for H-1B might try to squeeze into the incorrect category.”
Foreign actors and actresses hoping to perform on a Broadway stage might need to wait longer for the federal government to get to their applications in the pile. The standard process typically takes about two to six months.
In addition, some immigration attorneys are concerned that increased efforts to combat immigration fraud could make it more difficult for legitimate applications to be accepted.
Last month, the federal government launched an investigation in Minnesota named “Operation Twin Shield” that detected 275 suspected cases of immigration fraud. Describing the crackdown as a “tremendous success,” Joseph Edlow, the director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, stated that the agency is “declaring an all-out war on immigration fraud.” “We will relentlessly pursue everyone involved in undermining the integrity of our immigration system and laws,” he promised.
“A particular concern I have with respect to Operation Twin Shield where it impacts O-1B artists is that legitimate changes to the proposed itinerary which are a normal part of the unpredictability of the performing arts (like when a project is delayed because of funding when a producer drops out, or because a director has a schedule conflict) are sometimes misinterpreted by USCIS as ‘fraud,’ partly because officers are incentivized to see fraud under every rock, where it is just the normal course of how that industry functions,” warned Wolman.
The increased scrutiny could result in misunderstandings and mistakes, as Broadway producers continue to import the best British talent to the Broadway stage. Next month, Oedipus starring English performers Mark Strong and Lesley Manville will open at Studio 54, and Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) starring English actor Sam Tutty will open at the Longacre Theatre.