Detailed info on Austin, SXSW & everything you need to know on how to get there, what to do there and when to get it happening
OTHER THINGS YOU MAY NEED
DO YOU NEED ASSISTANCE WITH TRAVEL TO SxSW OR OTHER DESTINATIONS?
Brad Thomas of Travel Bureau is our official SxSW travel agent brad@travelbureau.com.au (02) 9267 4661
VISA WAIVERS FOR DELEGATES (NOT ARTISTS)
If you are travelling to the US to attend a convention, for business meetings or pleasure, you do not need a visa (so long as you are not earning money, not working with a performing artist playing in the US or not staying over 90 days). For Australian & NZ citizens, the Visa Waiver program is in effect.
Go to http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/visa_1750.html for general visa questions.
Details are here for the visa waiver programhttp://www.travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html. If you are attending the convention as a delegate, you do not need a visa but you are subject to the terms of the Visa Waiver Program.
There's a new wrinkle this year for casual travellers which is outlined
http://www.dhs.gov/xtrvlsec/programs/content_multi_image_0006.shtm called the Visit US program which requires certain types of passports and new ten finger scans on arrival.
VISA INFORMATION FOR BANDS (Visa not need for delegate but vital for bands)
This is extensive but it should answer most questions. The key thing here is that you MUST use a US based visa specialist if you are playing at SxSW.
Musicians performing for pay, or in a public venue whether paid or not must obtain a P1 Visa. If the artist is performing for a person or entity that supplies hotel, airfare or other consideration, it is considered earning and a P1 visa must be obtained. Details at US Government site at
http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/temp_1305.html and more specifically at http://uscis.gov/lpBin/lpext.dll/inserts/slb/slb-1/slb-10281/slb-16599/slb-18959?f=templates&fn=document-frame.htm#slb-8cfrsec2142p
SXSW makes an enormous effort to get all invitations out to international artists during the month of December. They make this effort to give artists the opportunity to start applying immediately for work visas within the required 90-100 day turnaround time. The processing time for petitions filed without using the fast-track program can be anywhere between 30 and 150 days, depending on various factors.
All visa applications must be made directly with the US Consulates or Embassies in Australia or NZ. A nonimmigrant visa application can only be filed at a consulate after the petition that was filed by a US entity, in which the entity, the US based 'immigration agent' or a US attorney has received notification that the petition has been approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The USCIS was formally known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
TIPS
Do not underestimate the costs, the challenges and the time involved in securing US work visas so act immediately you receive your invitation. We recommend you seek informed advice from one of the three agencies listed in the invitation: RAZCo Visas in NYC, Tamizdat in Prague/NYC and Global Action Immigration Services in Los Angeles. (two contacts below). As examples of costs, charges by agents in the US range from US$750-US$2500 per group on average (not including consular and filing fees).
If you apply for a visa with less than 90 days turnaround you may have to pay a $1,000 premium charge to the USCIS authorities.
US Department of Homeland Security regulations require that, as of October 26, 2004, all overseas posts collect finger scans from people applying for visas. As finger scans can only be collected in person, this will mean that all visa applicants will be required to apply for a visa in person through a prearranged appointment at their relevant Embassy or Consulate.
From October 26, 2004, all citizens from the 27 Visa Waiver Program countries seeking to enter the U.S. for temporary business or tourism/pleasure (B status), without obtaining a visa stamp, will be required to present a machine readable passport.
Visa specialists for the US include:
RON ZEELENS, Esq.
RAZCo Visas
254 West 54th Street, 14th Flr.
New York, New York 10019
USA Tel: 212-757-1289 fax 212 586 5175 ron@razcovisas.com
Tamizdat http://www.tamizdat.org/services.php
Matthew Covey Tamizdat US
matthew@tamizdat.org P.O. Box 20618
Mobil: +1.646.327.0885 New York, NY 10009
www.tamizdat.org P: +1.212.260.8444 F: +1.413.513.1157
----And now two articles on visa issues that points out some pitfalls-----
Locked Out
How visa procedures have blocked European musicians from the U.S. since 9-11
by Douglas Heingartner in The Village Voice New York Newspaper
July 15th, 2005 5:45 PM
Tales of musicians from nations like Syria and Cuba being kept at bay by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the INS) have become commonplace since 9-11. But European and Canadian musicians, too, are finding the consular walls unmanageably high.
Veteran U.K. anarcho-punks Subhumans, who finally landed a gig at B.B. King Blues Club July 19, had been successfully touring America since the early 1980s when they applied for new visas last July, assuming they were leaving more than enough time to get their paperwork in order for their scheduled tour of the U.S. that autumn. But when the U.S. embassy in London still hadn't processed their documents by mid October, Subhumans had to call off the first half-dozen of their stateside shows and then rebook an expensive set of last-minute (and non-refundable) plane tickets.
No wonder so many acts are now looking to other shores. Part of the reason is purely financial: Filing fees, travel to the local consulate, legal help, and what Ian Smith of the U.K.'s Musicians' Union calls "the thousand-dollar bribe" for premium processing can quickly add up to two grand per head. And even then there's no guarantee of getting a visa, which itself is no guarantee of getting in: The border officer at the point of entry makes that call. Figure in up-front costs for promotion and advertising, and it soon becomes untenable for some musicians to continue playing here.
At least the USCIS steers clear of any obvious political or musical profiling: No-gos hail from all genres, with metal from Canada (Cryptopsy, Into Eternity) and Norwegian (Nightwish, Marduk, Entombed, Satyricon) perhaps the hardest hit. When the drummer for Swedish death metalers Dimmu Borgir revealed a decade-old conviction for bicycle theft, that was enough to get him bumped from their upcoming U.S. tour, in fear immigration officials would otherwise nix the whole band. "We couldn't take the risk," says their guitarist Silenoz.
Mainstream acts have had their troubles too: British pop groups including the Libertines and Cooper Temple Clause have tussled with the U.S. visa man, as have eastern acts like Czech avant-punkers Sunshine and Slovakian Beatles-tribute band the Backwards. Not even marquee names like Kylie, Sting, and Blur have proven immune. "We had a situation very recently where George Michael was asked to queue," said Smith, of the Musicians' Union, "but Grosvenor Square [site of the U.S. embassy in London] decided that it would be quite a good idea just to get him in through the back door."
But smaller bands can't always afford the premium-processing needed to open doors like that. Bill Bragin, director of Joe's Pub, says that since the extra grand "can really make or break a tour," some have decided to forgo the whole process. "A thousand dollars just isn't worth it. They won't make that money back."
Phone calls to consular officials at $21 (15 euros) a pop don't help either. Dutch guitarist Peter Visser of Holland's indie-rock Bettie Serveert recently told a local music site he'd had to make seven of them for the band's upcoming tour.
"It's really harder now," says Alix Madarasz, the French American manager of Parisian techno label F Com. "It just makes you feel you're not really wanted in the U.S." With visa procedures that sometimes require artists to produce bank, phone, or property records, she says, "some of the guys just don't feel like going anymore."
One of those guys is the label's star DJ Laurent Garnier, who very publicly canceled a U.S. tour scheduled for March because of what he called on his website "completely unreasonable demands" that now make it "almost impossible for an artist to come and perform in the United States."
And the strong euro makes ignoring the U.S. easier than ever. "We are dealing in a global market for the leading artists, whose schedules are completely full and who have the ability to choose among the many offers they have," says Marc Scorca, president of the trade organization Opera America. "My concern is that they will choose not to come to the United Sates because it's just too difficult."
Some evidence indicates that's already happening. CMJ showcase manager Chris White says his festival has definitely featured less foreign talent of late. When he started six years ago, he says, bands had "a willingness to do whatever it took to get over here." But since the visa procedures have toughened up, he says, "They're more willing to say, 'We just won't do this, never mind.' If you can tour Europe without any hassle, certainly you're gonna think twice about touring the States."
British singer-songwriter Julian Dawson, for example, had breezed through the visa process for most of the 1990s--bolstered by a major record deal with BMG--until his luck ran out last year: His visa got held up and gigs were lost. Now, he says, "There's very much the feeling, 'Do I have to be known in Denver?' And that's a new feeling for me because I've focused very strongly actually on America. It's a big place to crack, and I've put a lot of work into it. I'm very sad to let it go. But my feeling at the moment is that it's being made next to impossible."
And imbalanced. "It's so easy for Americans to play in the U.K.," he says. "Right now, England is awash with singer-songwriters from Austin and Tennessee and New York and Boston. It costs them 90 pounds," he said. "It's very unevenly weighted at the moment."
To Smith, whose union has been among those lobbying the British government to redress the disparities, "It's still a lot longer this end to the States than it is the States here. And if you have the wrong surname, and if your parents were born in the wrong country, there are still problems."
Such visa snags can be "surreal and farcical," says Davey Ray Moor, the Australian-Brit songwriter formerly with London-based Bacharach revivalists Cousteau. Moor happened to be born in Lebanon, where his father was stationed as an accountant for the U.N., and the Beirut label on the songwriter's passport was enough to flag his 2002 visa application for six extra weeks of vetting. Worse, in the '80s--"the '80s being a rather pretentious time"--he'd changed his name from Moore to Moor: "I thought that taking the E off it would give it a whiff of mystery and intrigue, but it probably confirmed in the mind of some visa bureaucrat that I was kind of a sultry foreigner." The hold-up meant he'd eventually miss Cousteau's U.S. tour.
There are some signs of change, though. USCIS waiting times are gradually dropping, and up-to-date info is quickly posted to the agency's site. The service center in Vermont, which handles all requests for the Northeast, now routinely processes visas in under a month--even in cases where the applicant opts not to pay extra for premium processing. "I've been doing this for seven or eight years, and it's never been that fast," says Matthew Covey of Tamizdat, an organization that helps foreign musicians sort out their paperwork. "They're stricter, but there's a much clearer sense of what they're looking for. It used to be that it was a matter of how much you'd scream or cry or cajole. Now it's a much more systematic process."
Virginia-based immigration lawyer Jonathan Ginsburg agrees. "The U.S. consulates in general are doing their utmost to accommodate the arts, who really do get a degree of attention way out of proportion to the actual numbers involved." When a rock star is delayed, he says, "you're sure to read about it somewhere," and those who lack bureaucratic finesse "are the ones normally who will get themselves in the most trouble, and who will respond in the most hysterical manner."
Indeed, the "forced to cancel" mantra that accompanies many visa stories can ring false, with musicians sometimes playing the evil-empire card to cloak their own administrative failures. "Because the immigration service is faceless," says Covey, "I know for a fact that they frequently take the fall for managerial fuck-ups. I could tick off five fairly high-profile cases right now that I know that's exactly what happened."
But he's loath to name names. According to Nigel McCune of Britain's Musicians' Union, "the vast majority of artists who are relying on their career to take off in the States at some point are not really prepared to go on record about this," in fear that "whenever their name is mentioned, some red light is gonna go off and say they're the ones who were dissing the USCIS."
How the post-9/11 border is keeping us safe from indie rock
by Scott Indrisek
July 10th, 2007 2:10 PM
He's landed on a government watch list, had his eyeballs scanned and fingerprints archived, and been cited for attempting to cross borders with illegal merchandise manufactured abroad--thankfully, guards and immigration authorities have him in their sights. Unfortunately, he's not a terrorist lugging a dirty bomb in from Canada. He's a twentysomething indie-pop musician, originally from Toronto, who's one of the growing number of creative casualties resulting from amped-up visa fees, byzantine union policy, surly customs authorities, and a post-9/11 climate of aggressive paranoia.
The spurned musician wanted to keep his identity anonymous, for fear of future retribution from customs authorities. It's a common theme. "I hate The Man, but I am kind of worried about talking on the subject of sneaking into the States," wrote another prominent indie-rocker via e-mail. "I think they are vengeful and terrifying." Are we winning the war on terror? That's debatable. But it's abundantly clear that we've crippled the once-laissez-faire musical exchange between the U.S. and Canada.
The timing couldn't be worse for north-of-the-border acts like Hidden Cameras, Frog Eyes, Wolf Parade, and Handsome Furs. Their star is ascendent back home, and touring the States is a way to get the word out, sell a few T-shirts, and build a reputation at Yankee music festivals like CMJ and SXSW. As with anything involving the U.S. government, though, there's a wealth of paperwork, particularly the dreaded P-class visa, a wisp of paper that applies to performing artists and athletes and allows foreign bands to legally play for pay here. P-1 visas cover up to a year of cross-border touring, and as such are highly coveted; unfortunately, a musician needs to prove "sustained international renown," which means at least a year of noticeable fame to back it up.
"When you apply for your P-1 visa, if you don't have hard press, you can spend a shit-ton of money and still get denied," explains Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs, the latter an upstart Sub Pop duo that recently scrapped a U.S. tour after visa difficulties. "They don't take Internet press seriously--you have to send them a magazine they've heard of, like Spin or Rolling Stone." Boeckner was wielding a P-1 visa under the established Wolf Parade moniker, but that didn't cover the Furs, his new project with fiancee Alexei Perry. "There's a certain level of hypocrisy with the Canadian system for media," he explains. "A couple years ago, when Montreal started blowing up, it was front-page entertainment news in every publication, and there was a lot of patting ourselves on the back. But then there's no one in the country here, outside of the musicians' union, who's actively petitioning the U.S. government to loosen up their border laws."
For most touring musicians, a P-2 visa is the easier option, handled through the American Federation of Musicians, a joint U.S.-Canadian union. But the price leaps from 190 to 320 U.S. dollars on July 30, and that's assuming an impossible scenario in which a band with a fully booked tour itinerary applies four months in advance. A "rush" application adds $1,000 to the total--double that if you want to cover support staff and roadies. (In March, California Democrat Howard Berman floated the Arts Require Timely Service--ARTS--Act, pushing a shorter 45-day window on visa processing. It passed the Senate and is now awaiting House approval.) Add in the cost of AFM membership and union dues, and all of a sudden that three-week jaunt down the Eastern seaboard might be a bit more trouble than it's worth.
For a scrappy Canuck indie band, those fees can often be prohibitive, and that's if their visa application is even accepted. Vancouver dance-punk act You Say Party! We Say Die! was turned down because they weren't making enough money to qualify. A tour opening for Thunderbirds Are Now! was netting them a paltry $200 a gig; the AFM mandates that a band needs to be making a certain rate--which varies depending on the length of show and number of band members--in order to earn their visa stripes. (It's a trade secret that savvy promoters will doctor contracts to reflect this minimum.) "We were denied for those permits, and we're like, We're going anyway," recalls Stephen O'Shea, YSP!WSD!'s bassist. "We had our story: We're going to L.A. to record a demo."
That trick had worked in the past--all you needed was a bit of creativity and a U.S. phone number to list. Unfortunately, the band was also carrying a minutely detailed tour itinerary that listed previous and upcoming U.S. dates, a hot piece of evidence they were too tired and too cocky to dispose of properly. Customs officers pulled O'Shea aside and grilled him for five hours; meanwhile, other guards called the promoters listed on the itinerary, verifying a string of dates down the West Coast. "The trick is, you've got to maintain the story," asserts O'Shea, who was busy prevaricating while half-American vocalist Becky Ninkovic "turned on the waterworks" in the lobby. "You're talking to different agents, and they're going to look for holes. It ends up I lied my way to the top of the chain of command."
That translated into a fraud charge and a strict five-year ban on entering the United States--tempting the wrath of a border guard now could earn O'Shea two to 20 years in prison, plus a $250,000 fine. (The severity of the punishment is thanks to his heroically steadfast lying--a band that attempts an illegal border-crossing and then pleads bureaucratic ignorance might get off more easily.) "A lot of people had been telling us that since 9/11, they stepped up the border quite a bit, bringing guys from Homeland Security back from Iraq and straight into border patrol," O'Shea says. "So they know how to be even harsher. They weren't mean, but . . . the guard explained, almost in a threatening tone, You're really lucky that this is the States, son. If this was China or Russia, you'd be out back shot right now. They don't make it easy for you, that's for sure.
"I still know bands that go down all the time," he continues. "They have different ways--whether there's an American in the band who drives the gear over and the other three just walk across, say they're going to Seattle for a week to hang out with some friends. There's always ways around it. Punk rock has always been about not doing things the proper way--for us, getting the visas was a bit of a weird, new thing. At the same time, we had to start doing it legitimately. I get a lot of people asking me, 'So what did you do, to make sure that we don't fuck it up?' A lot of bands are using us as a good example of what not to do."
Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes and Swan Lake recalls a kinder, simpler time: the halcyon days of the mid '90s, when a crappy ID card issued by Money Mart, a check-cashing chain, was good enough to enter the U.S. Even now, he admits a bit of superficial hygiene goes a long way: "We shave and don't have Mohawks. We rent a minivan. We could be young Christians coming over the border."
In a lot of ways, the new regime simply means it's a whole lot harder to flout a set of laws that used to be politely ignored. And if sneaking into the U.S. was once a viable option, it no longer is, mainly thanks to the online hype machine that helped put these musicians on the international radar to begin with. "With the Internet now, it's pretty much impossible to bullshit your way through the border," Boeckner says. "If you look like you're in a band--if they smell 'band,' right?--they'll take everybody's passports, they will Google people's actual names. If anybody's blogged about you, no matter how small, or if you have a MySpace page, that will come up, and then they'll find out the name of the band. They usually can put two and two together." (Mercer agrees with the idea of Web-savvy border guards, but doubts there's "a research squad checking Pitchfork.")
There's another, stranger motive behind all this harassment: Maybe Canadian bands are under scrutiny because they might be competition to American bands. Just like an itinerant bricklayer who wanders down from Quebec to pick up work in Albany, the idea is that foreign musicians are taking Yankee jobs. That's an amusing illogic that turns a rock group into a utilitarian sound-making machine, a musical widget only differentiated by its country of origin. "Why have a Canadian band play when you can be employing American musicians with the same show? That's totally their line of thinking," Boeckner explains. "If you talk to the visa people, they take it really, really seriously. What this all comes down to is that Canadian bands are stealing American bands' jobs. They're not differentiating between whether you're a band or if you're in contract work for an oil company or you're an architect. With the climate at the border now, everyone is just going to have to get the proper paperwork--and pay."
Tamizdat, a nonprofit firm, has been offering visa services for a fraction of the price charged by law firms and outside agencies. They began in the early '90s--assisting Eastern and Central European bands that wanted to tour America--and now their roster includes a healthy number of Canadian musicians. "After 9/11, things got a lot harder for artists to get into the U.S.," explains executive director Matthew Covey. "Up until 2001-2, a young German entering the country with a big boxful of vinyl would be considered a 'record collector.' Suddenly, [immigration] updated their profile: That's a DJ coming to work, and he doesn't have a work visa. The biggest problem I've heard of recently [is bands] not getting their act together in time... 7Most people in the music industry, if they haven't figured out what they're up against with this, they should have by now--which is in no way to be an apologist for the process. It's not a secret. It doesn't take a lot to figure out that it's a nightmare."
As for Canadian bands that can't stand the administrative headache? There's always the promised lands of France, Spain, and Germany, since Europe tends to be a bit more receptive to foreign creatives. "I can make a comparable amount of money in Europe, and don't have to shell out $1,500 per person to get a visa," says Boeckner, who meanwhile is planning another go at the border for a few U.S. summer dates with both Handsome Furs and Wolf Parade. "It's hard, too, because if you talk to a lot of Canadian bands, touring Canada is a fucking pain in the ass--in the middle of the country, you're looking at a 10-hour drive between cities."
"Europe is great," Frog Eyes' Mercer effuses. "You come off the airplane and say, We're here! We're gonna rock! They say, Welcome."