Canadian musicians say a more than triple hike in US tour visa fees will have a ‘ripple effect’

Independent musician Tess Roby making synthcentric Montreal pop music. Patrick Boivin/Handout

The expense that independent musicians like Tess Roby have to bear to tour their music has always been high. Somebody has to pay for all the flights, rental cars, gas, hotels, visas, backing musicians and tour managers – food is nice too – to make concerts possible. Aside from lucky hitmakers who receive serious financial backing, it’s often the artists themselves who support some or all of their tours.

Things have only gotten worse since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as rising inflation makes spending more expensive while payouts for concerts often stay the same. “A lot of artists don’t come back for their money,” says Roby, who makes synthcentric pop music in Montreal.

This year, playing in the largest and closest touring market to Canada could become even more prohibitive. In early January, US Citizenship and Immigration Services proposed more than tripling the fee to process the temporary work visas that musicians from around the world need to tour the United States. His rationale is to “cover costs and maintain an adequate level of service”.

Under the new proposals, the cost of certain P-Type and O-Type visas to enter the country would increase from $460 each to more than $1,600, adding additional costs to enter the United States for Musicians who are sometimes lucky to be making a few hundred dollars a gig.

The potential price hike was enough that officials from the American Federation of Musicians, who partially represented their wing of the Canadian Federation of Musicians, tried to intervene last week. Together with lobbyists from other tour-related artistic disciplines such as dance and theater, they met with the US Small Business Administration last Thursday to ask for support against the fee increases.

Liana White, executive director of the Canada division, says the meeting went well and the Small Business Administration will put its weight behind opposing the fee increase. “This office has been a very good resource for us because they are already planning actions,” says White. (The Small Business Administration’s Advocacy Office told The Globe and Mail that it takes the concerns raised at the meeting very seriously but is still gathering information before taking a formal stance.)

A key component of the visa fee increase is a $600 fee that would help fund broader U.S. asylum programs, which officials say are “shifting some costs to applications generally filed by petitioners who who have a higher ability to pay”. White sees this as an unfair shift in costs in the chain: “They want to burden the artists with this, when it should actually be the US federal government that is paying for these humanitarian efforts.”

US Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, did not comment prior to publication. It is taking public comments on a large number of fee change proposals until March 6, after which it will decide which will be set in stone.

Toronto-based Weather Station bandleader Tamara Lindeman says the increase in costs could become prohibitive for scores of artists. DANIEL DORSA/Handout

The Weather Station bandleader Tamara Lindeman, featured on recent albums ignorance And How come I should look at the stars? has shifted her attention from folk music to jazzier textures, warns that the rise in costs could become prohibitive for scores of artists. “If you cross the border to play a few shows, you might make $600,” says Toronto-based Lindeman. “A $1,500 visa for that — that’s just not going to happen.”

Depending on tour length, Americans sometimes don’t have to pay anything to play shows in Canada. But the cost for Canadians to cross the same border continues to rise.

The last major increase in visa fees occurred in late 2016, when US authorities increased processing costs by 42 percent to $460. That increase drew the ire of Canadian musicians, who warned that such a price hike could prevent up-and-coming artists from building audiences in the important US touring market.

A little over six years later, the proposal to increase fees for P and O visas has been condemned even more harshly. “These rising costs will hit low-income, working-class, marginalized and emerging artists the hardest,” says Roby. “These are some of the most integral voices in art.”

Roby was one of the first artists to take to social media to raise awareness of rising visa costs. The aftermath, she says, could hurt US fans as much as international artists. “US consumers will see increases in ticketing costs and commodity prices,” she says. “It will have this ripple effect.”

Canada is a very small touring market and Canadian hitmakers from Neil Young to Drake have largely exploded thanks to the US market’s cultivation. And touring has only gained traction in the last two decades. It was once positioned as a marketing opportunity for musicians’ vinyl and CDs, but as illegal downloading and streaming sucked the money out of recorded music, the economics of the industry changed. For many musicians, live performances have become the payday that keeps them playing in the first place.

The shift was not particularly sustainable.

Roby has been through the wrestler with tours before, Warning on Twitter Late last year that she was unable to tour her 2022 album ideas of space as planned as it struggled with both its own rising costs and an industry looking for guaranteed ticket sales. (Artists have begun to push back against the way industry players are trying to recoup costs, with artists like Polaris Music Award-winning musician, activist and author Cadence Weapon campaigning against venues that are cutting merchandise sales make.)

Aside from the face value of US temporary work visas, there are other hidden costs to touring the US. Almost a third of an artist’s income can also be withheld by promoters or venues and considered a US tax liability, requiring complicated tax returns to recoup some of the money later.

Expediting a visa application can cost up to $2,500. And because of its role in submitting applications to American visa processing authorities, the American Federation of Musicians charges musicians additional fees.

Canadian Independent Music Association executive Andrew Cash, a veteran musician and former Toronto MP, said he’s been in talks with the American Association of Independent Music to keep visa costs from skyrocketing.

“It’s too expensive,” he says. “The people I talk to in the music industry in the USA don’t want to see that either.” Because music is a global market, “the more friction they have, the more difficult it is for them”.

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