Fwd: OT: US visa rules force foreign artists to stay away

--- In jazz_guitar@yahoogroups.com, "musicmaker1245"
<musicmaker1245@y...> wrote:
http://www.sundayherald.com/29976

They are meant to stop terrorism, but America's tighter border
controls stand accused of simply being racist, writes Ros Davidson in
Los Angeles

Robin Huw Bowen, a leading Welsh harpist, almost became the latest in
a growing list of musicians, writers and actors who are being kept
out of the USA under new, tighter visa restrictions. The day before
his flight to Chicago in late November, the renowned musician had to
leave his home in Aberystwyth at 5.30am for an emergency appointment
at the US Embassy in London.
His last-ditch plea for a visa worked, and he is now touring America,
as he has done so often before. His tale is part of a disturbing
trend caused by the US government's fight against terrorism, a
squelching of non-American culture. Scores of international
performers have had to cancel appearances since America tightened its
visa rules and security checks this summer.

Performers and presenters in the US are losing money. The recording
industry will be hampered, say critics of the policy. Labels prefer
to issue CDs when a group is touring. And Americans are being
deprived of cultural communication at a time when it is more crucial
than ever before.

'This just increases the sense of isolation that's descending on the
US and shows how much we're not in synch with the rest of the world,'
says Richard Pena, director of the New York Film Festival.

In September, Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami, former winner
of the Cannes Palme d'Or, could not attend the premiere of his latest
film, Ten, at the festival -- even though he had been to the US seven
times previously. As a protest, Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, one-
time winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, refused to attend.

World-famous musicians The Afro-Cuban All Stars recently had to back
out of a tour of sold-out concerts. Two of their members, Ibrahim
Ferrer and Ruben Gonzalez, have worked with the Buena Vista Social
Club. Other Cubans denied visas include famed jazz pianist Chucho
Valdes, rapper X Alfonso and members of Sintesis, some of a startling
total of 22 Cubans who could not attend September's Latin Grammy
Awards in Miami.

Havana-based film director Humberto Solas, one of whose films has
been nominated at Cannes, could not attend a film festival tribute to
his work in November. Polo Montanez, whose music is topping the
charts in much of Latin America, had to cancel his US appearances.
Just over a fortnight ago he died in a car crash.

'Americans will now never see him perform live,' says immigration
lawyer Bill Martinez. He is working with the World Music Institute of
New York which, along with several other cultural organisations, may
soon sue the US State Department for denying 'freedom of expression',
a constitutional right.

Iranian musician Hussein Alizadeh was only able to join a group of
Iranian performers in the US in October after sympathetic members of
the US Congress intervened. He missed the first nine gigs.

Nor does working with a household name protect a foreign artiste from
ignominy. Canadian-Iranian instrumentalist Kayhan Kalhor, who
performs with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, was so flustered by
being fingerprinted, photographed and searched that he has vowed
never to return.

A Canadian citizen, he has lived in New York. But his birthplace,
Iran, marked him. He says the new restrictions amount to harassment
and discrimination.

Syria and Iran are among the US's 'group of seven', along with Libya,
Iraq, Sudan, Cuba and North Korea. Another film-maker who could not
attend a festival was Bahman Ghobadi, the Kurdish-Iranian director of
A Time For Drunken Horses, another winner at Cannes. His film
Marooned In Iraq, which purportedly contains a few rants against
Saddam Hussein, came first at the Chicago International Film Festival
in October. Infuriated, he turned down the prize.

President Bush signed the Enhanced Border Security and Reform Act in
May, which targeted those born in seven countries that the US says
sponsor terrorism, even if they were citizens of another country.

A second, more extensive, list of suspect countries has been issued,
many of them Muslim, including Pakistan and Indonesia, Saudi Arabia
and Morocco. Since August, anyone applying for a US visa faces more
thorough background checks.

The classical Artemis Quartet, from Berlin, was forced to cancel a
concert in San Francisco last month after immigration officials found
that its cellist, Eckart Runge, had stolen a pair of tweezers as a
young man in Colorado.

Three-time Booker Prize nominee Rohinton Mistry, the Canadian
novelist born in India, made front-page news this autumn when he
cancelled a book tour because of humiliating treatment at three US
airports. He said afterwards: 'I don't find this is the random check
that they talk about, not when they happen to have it at every single
stop, every single airport.'

Even his compatriot Margaret Atwood had difficulty. She had to return
home to come up with more paperwork, missed her flight to the US and
only just arrived in time for her book reading.

On October 30, Canada issued a rare travel warning to its citizens
visiting America. As of Tuesday this week, crossing the Canadian-US
border becomes even more tricky. All Commonwealth citizens, except
those from the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, must have
visas.

Denis Coderre, Canada's minister of citizenship and immigration
blasted the new policy as racial profiling that shows a lack of
confidence in Canada's new immigration regulations. Less widely know
is that all would-be foreign male visitors to the US aged between 16
and 45 -- but not women -- must now account for every country visited
in the last decade, in case they are terrorists.

Even members of Burach, the Celtic rock group from Edinburgh, had to
defend their visits to Russia, Turkey and India when they entered the
US in September, according to their US agent Nancy Carlin. The
ultimate impact, she says, is a chilling of cultural communication.
She cites the example of a colleague, the director of a small
festival in Michigan, who now says he will no longer consider non-
American acts. It is just too risky financially, he told Carlin,
especially for a small presenter.
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