http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/27/britain-persecutes-visiting-artists-visa
How Britain persecutes visiting artists
Britain's great tradition of cultural exchange is being damaged by its absurd visa bureaucracy
The Wu-Tang Clan told the Glastonbury crowds they had been treated like the Taliban by UK border officials. Photograph: PR company handout
Prior to becoming a UK resident in 2007, I would visit the UK with a tourist visa stamped in my Pakistani passport, and conversations with border officials at Heathrow went something like this: "How long are you staying? Where will you stay? What is the purpose of your visit?" To this last question I'd often answer that I was seeing friends, and taking part in a couple of literature festivals. Sometimes the officials would ask for my novel's name and promise to look out for it, or they'd just wave me through. Today they'd be likely to deport me.
In 2008 the Labour government introduced the points-based system(PBS) for non-EU citizens. It transpired that this "system for managing migration" wanted to manage writers coming to read at festivals, artists attending the opening of their exhibitions or musicians playing to a paying audience. The Australian points-based system on which the UK's was based recognised that artists entering on a short-term basis didn't qualify as migrants, and left them outside the PBS along with other short-term visitors such as tourists. But the UK, while leaving tourists outside the PBS, placed non-EU artists within it, in a category known as tier 5 (temporary worker) – which lumps together a diverse group of citizens, from a musician playing at a festival for one evening to a priest entering for up to 24 months to carry out pastoral duties.
This means a mountain of bureaucracy – applying in person to the nearest UK embassy (which could be thousands of miles away, even in another country); submitting biometric details; and, if the inviting organisation doesn't have a certificate of sponsorship, providing proof that there is £800 in the applicant's bank account for a consecutive 90-day period (if it dips below £800 for even a day the visa is refused).
Almost immediately stories rolled in of artists denied visas, artists finding the visa process too cumbersome, artists hassled or deported by officials now required to view them as migrants who might be breaking the law rather than visitors coming for a short period, adding to the UK's cultural life, and leaving. Consequently, artists arriving with a musical instrument, a camera or a paintbrush are often asked to show a work visa or risk being treated as criminals.
The American photographer Alec Soth was told he could risk two years in prison if he took any photos in the UK without a work visa. (He got round this by handing the camera to his seven-year-old daughter, and exhibiting pictures she took.)
The cellist Kristin Ostling didn't even have the opportunity to subvert the rules – she was deported for entering the UK with a cello, even though she was merely planning to attend a musicology conference for which she wouldn't be paid. Last weekend at Glastonbury the Wu-Tang Clan complained on stage that immigration had treated them "like the Taliban".
The most high-profile case is the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who applied for a visa in 2009 so that he could direct Cosi fan Tutte for the ENO; it was granted, then withdrawn, and he was asked to re-apply and submit a second set of fingerprints. He withdrew his application and issued a statement about his "disgraceful treatment" at the hands of visa officials.
Not all artists have to undergo the rigours of tier 5 application. There does exist, outside the PBS, an "entertainer visa", available to artists invited to a select group of festivals that have qualified as permit-free festivals, and to various categories of artists who are performing without a fee. In effect the UK Border Agency's rules encourage organisers to leave artists unpaid for their time and effort – I know if I still needed a visa to participate in literary events I'd ask the organisers to please waive the performance fee so that I could go through the far less arduous visa route.
There is a simple solution, formulated by English PEN, the Manifesto Club and the Earl of Clancarty, who raised the matter in the Lords earlier this year: remove short-term visits by non-EU artists from the PBS and expand the entertainer route, letting paid and unpaid artists qualify. In anopen letter to the home secretary, leading figures from the UK's cultural sphere have asked for this change – including Nick Hytner, Nicholas Serota, Gillian Slovo, Tom Stoppard and Ruth Rendell.
"The UK's great tradition of cultural exchange is being badly damaged through the points-based system," the letter says, citing a GLA survey in which 70% of arts organisations polled said the PBS is negatively affecting London's status as a world arts centre. If that doesn't convince, perhaps the next part of the sentence will, "and in the long term, we will doubtless suffer economically".
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