Heightened visa and immigration enforcement have justifiably raised concerns among international creators and the U.S. comics community alike. Is travel safe? What could lead to detention or denial of entry? Are there options for protecting one’s freedom to create beyond tourist and business visas or ESTA? And where can we go for help, whether it’s an individual in trouble or a comic-con gets raided by ICE?
As the previous posts highlight, there are indeed risks in travel, and understanding the current parameters in visa law can help reduce the probability of catching law enforcement’s attention. In this post, we’ll finish this series by discussing options beyond B visas and resources for getting additional help.
Other visa options
There is a wide range of nonimmigrant visa categories beyond tourists visas, business visas, and the Visa Waiver Program, often referred to as ESTA. Several that may be helpful to international travelers to comic-cons include the
- I visa, for foreign media/journalists;
- J visa, for scholars or teachers in exchange visitor programs;
- O visa, for people of extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, business, education, or athletics; and
- P visa, for performing artists and entertainers.
Each visa type has its own set of requirements as well as fees, which especially for the O and P visa can be rather costly, upwards of two to three thousand dollars.
For I and J visas, standards developed in the twentieth century can cause complications – both are designed for travelers within larger corporate structures. Journalists are traditionally described in terms of employees of a newspaper, broadcaster, and news syndicate, not freelancers or influencers. Fortunately, I-visa regulations have been updating (they now mention blogs – I didn’t see they were updating quickly!), so there are ways for independent journalists to qualify, though it is equally important to pay attention to the specific boundaries of what qualifies as permissible journalistic activity. Similarly, the professor/teacher visa is framed in terms of an exchange program – getting assistance navigating rules can likewise be helpful.
I know several people in comics and comics-adjacent work who are looking into O visas, P visas, and other temporary worker categories that provide for doing paid activity. Besides fees, each is subject to regulations that can make getting the visa more complicated than one might expected. The O visa, for example, has standards for what qualifies as extraordinary or, in the case of people in work in television or motion pictures (note: not comics), internationally recognized. These standards significantly increase the value of receiving an award or significant press coverage – visa processing officials look to these as evidence when determining whether an O-visa applicant qualifies to receive it.
Similarly, the P visa category, which can be interest to professional cosplayers and others whose career or comic-con participation arguably involves some type of performance – has rules regarding what qualifies as a performance (grounded, as I visa, in more 20th-century standards of formal structured activity); there is also a type of P visa that resembles the J visa in requiring an exchange program, as well as another type of P visa that looks to a performance’s uniqueness. Once again, getting more detailed legal advice before submitting the application can make a big difference.
Getting help
As the number of people who’ve told us that recent developments in this area have affected everything from their travel plans to what they create, visa and immigration rules are having a direct impact on free expression through the comic arts. ICE raids, plainclothes artist alley patrols, complicated visa applications, detention or refusal of entry when traveling – these are all situations where getting a lawyer can be invaluable, even imperative for defending comics, creators, comic-cons, and the rights of the entire comics community.
First and foremost, if you have any questions or encounter any problems in this area, you can contact us here at the CBLDF. I’m a lawyer myself, and everything I do for CBLDF is pro bono, that is, no cost. In addition, we have a network of volunteer attorneys who depending on the situation might be able to provide more granular assistance; we also have other contacts. You can reach us either via email (info@cbldf.org; jeff.trexler@cbldf.org) or via our socials.
Moreover, there are nonprofits that specialize visa and immigration law. Some law schools have immigration law clinics; one thing to note re these clinics is that they often have substantial workloads and can be affected by the realities of the academic calendar, so if they say they cannot help or could not provide assistance fast enough, that does not mean you won’t be able to find help elsewhere, such as the Immigrant Defense Project, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, National Immigrant Justice Center, the ACLU’s immigrant rights initiatives, the Immigration Advocates Network Legal Directory, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and local legal aid and immigration assistance groups in your own state or country.
Next stop: San Diego
The CBLDF will be hosting a panel in which we’ll discuss visas and other international issues affecting free expression and comics, and I hope to have an online panel on this issue as well. If you’re planning to be at SDCC, please join us at Hard Traveling Heroes: Free Expression and the Global Comics Community, Saturday at noon in Room 11!