A French quartet is denied US visa
NewsMessage from Jordan Victoria of the Arod Quartet:
It’s been almost 3 months since we applied for a US visa to tour the United States. We have the same papers for concerts, made the same trips, we are on the same petition, we are all French with a French passport. On paper it should be the same for everyone! And yet..
Like every time, Jeremy, Tanguy and I have our visa in 48 hours and like every time Alexandre’s one takes longer, we don’t know why.
As every time, a few weeks before departure we get no response from the embassy and start sending emails every day to inform that departure is in a few weeks and that we urgently need Alexandre’s visa.
We warn agents that the date is approaching and still have nothing despite the many emails our agents, contacts, organizers and us send every day to the embassy.
A few days before departure, we’re forced to think of a plan B: find an American violinist who will be there or someone who has a valid US visa at the time. The stress, the fatigue, the sleepless nights, the organization, the rehearsals with the mind that this is a program that we will surely not play with Alexandre. All that hard work..
Every day we expect the slightest phone ringtone, the slightest email!
In vain.
Today we leave without Alexandre, lose a colossal amount of money and see the stress and fatigue of arriving the night before a concert and preparing a Haydn Quartet, a Mendelssohn Quartet and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden with someone we doesn’t know.
I would like to understand, if Alexandre is the only one in this case. If the reasons, which we will never know, are not tied to his origins.
Maybe 3 months were not enough to peel off the paper he had to fill out for the Xth time, including the last 15 years of his musician life in detail.
After all, it’s only for 10 days of concerts, is there really a need for all that?
Three months??? Should have started the process a year ago. Most US systems are broken- immigration, healthcare, education, law enforcement, financials, etc etc. You’re lucky if anything gets done, or done correctly.
Thanks for that, Joe Biden.
He has/had nothing to do with it. Thank him for acting swiftly to help keep Trump’s buddy out of Eastern Europe.
Why Biden? This is very unlikely to have anything to do with the President. It is decided at a much lower level.
Issuing P visas is well below the radar screen of the President.
Has nothin fb to with Biden. Turn to trump for limitations on immigration and visas.
thie is a mean-spirited respons. The system worked just fine for three of the members. I wonder what is the possible danger the fourth member poses to America.
They are broken because the former President eliminated jobs in every agency, claiming he was “daining the swamp.” This has affected everything, including the FAA. And, what is the “origin” of the person rejected, that the US govt. would find him so objectionable?
It’s either Trump or Biden’s fault.
Or both.
Because — well, you know — pointing the finger of blame is what we do.
I am American and am so often ashamed of the way my country’s government behaves, I am seriously considering migrating out. I am very sorry this has happened to someone looking only to spread joy through great music. We let all manner of riff raff in but punish those who try and do the right thing, or, at least, the legal thing.
So sorry. It is awful, absolutely awful. The bureaucracy is beyond bad and this lack of communication is even worse. Sometimes a congressional inquiry helps, but it shouldn’t come to that.
Please remember that a visa to my country is a privilege, not a right.
Presumably you don’t live in Texas or Arizona? I think the last figure for illegal border crossings in 6 million.
Like a visa to a EU country, for that matter… but does not seem to be an issue for US artists to visit. The double standard is outrageous.
Your question strikes me as breathtakingly naive.
Alexandre was born in Vietnam, a communist country, formerly at war with the United States.
Believe it or not, it is still the law in the US that former members of the Communist Party cannot become American citizens.
That same heightened suspicion and scrutiny extend to visa applications as well.
What is Alexandre’s family connection/history in Vietnam, specifically during what the Americans called the Vietnam War?
It would not surprise me one bit if his family is on some American blacklist, or Vietnamese blacklist, or both.
So, no, you four are not equally French and equal before the eyes of immigration officials in the US.
There is a dossier on him that raises a red flag everytime his name comes up. He needs to hire a good lawyer, make a lot of calls, and find out, in both the US and in Vietnam. No doubt the French authorities are in on it, so start with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Aha, so I’m not the only one who is surprised about this naivety of the involved musicians, agents and organizers. As if they live in a phantasy land.
Okay, it explains a lot when assuming that this is the norm rather than the exception.
samach’s comment might be valid if this was a first application. It appears though that all members of the quartet have toured the US before.
As for the nonsense about Vietnam, that’s precisely what it is – idiotic bureaucratic nonsense. The illegal Vietnam War – the reasons given to Congress were later found to be lies! – ended around half a century ago. In many respects it is now an ally of the USA. Certainly the two countries are on friendly terms. Besides, there are several million descendants of Vietnamese immigrants living and working in the country, many as US citizens. This is just a case of bureaucracy gone mad.
Samach, I think you have put your finger on the problem. I was thinking on the same lines and did not know he was born in Vietnam. The CIA may have on their list a person with the same name.
Americans and Communism…you guys still think everything wrong is because of communists or Communism. 2008 definitely was not because of it…
Stop throwing around words you don’t understand.
And yes they are all equally French, it’s not 14th century anymore, keep your paranoia at home
Alexander Vu was born in Vietnam which apparently accounts for his visa problems. The USA killed 3 million Vietnamese in a pointless war. The insanity continues.
Oh heck! If you know you have a tricky CV, and you know bureaucracies rule, then you apply early to countries like the US, UK, Japan and China. Three months is not early.
As for the tragedy of war (whether VN, WW I and II, , Algeria, the Belgian Congo, Russia, etc .) and counting the dead… yes, lots of countries can tick that box. Avoiding such countries would make it a short list indeed of countries to visit – or live in. But let’s move on.
Kind regards.
Where did you get your 3 million number. Source please.
Perhaps consider how South Korea thinks about U.S. intervention. Most people would say that this is a positive story.
They deny a visa to the only member of the quartet who isn’t white, then make them travel take each instrument and bow out of the case to go through the airport X-ray and grab the cello by the bridge (according to their Instagram), all in the name of “security” in a country where children regularly are shot to death in schools and nobody does anything. Deeply messed up country.
Jim, the US is stuck in a bind. The gun Lobby is very powerful and vast numbers of Americans seem to worship the 2nd Amendment even though it arguably is about having local militias rather than individuals carrying automatics.
But one foreigner from an “enemy” country might want to hurt someone and that would be an outrageous terrorist act (which it would be, but so are domestic shootings).
The US is a terrible country in full decline. Don’t go there.
How so? There are pockets of good and bad. Stop reading msm and you may elevate your mind.
Alviano, So glad you won’t be coming here!
Alviano, mi fa molto piacere da sapere che non ti vedro mai arrivare a questo paese! Grazie tanto.
Why on earth did they wait until three months before the tour to apply for the visa?
Awful . Especially as you are only trying to bring joy and culture to people
When I worked at IMG artist in NYC, we used to have a special number to call for the embassy to fast track and fix everything. Surprised that didn’t happen. Interesting.
– La notion de visa collectif n’ existe pas.
– Alexandre est né au Vietnam. Même avec un passeport français,
l’ administration américaine tient toujours compte du lieu de
naissance. Et vérifie de près l’ éventuelle double nationalité. Ca peut
prendre beaucoup de temps.
– La solution ? Peut-être ? faire intervenir auprès de l’ Ambassade
un “lawyer” américain, spécialiste de l’ immigration, pour faciliter
l’ obtention du via
How wonderful. Every time there is an article like this, a bunch of people say, oh America, why would you want to go to that third-world like country anyway. About as predictable as Yannick and Met-bashing, and Yuja and Dude loving. Sometimes musicians are their worst enemies.
As far as why someone would want to go to America, hmmm, let me see, to worship guns and Trump? No, probably because it’s a very significant market for classical music to this day, and still paying handsome fees. No one is forcing anyone to play concerts here, you can go play in the Netherlands where concert promoters take months to pay you a pittance, for example. You are welcome, have a good day.
Inaccurate headline, as is frequently the case here. The quartet was not denied a visa; a member of the quartet was denied a visa. Visas are not issued to groups, only individuals.
Personally, I think whatever rationale is being used to deny him a visa is wrong — he’s proposing to play a concert, not move here. He’s not taking a job away from some hard-working American any more than the other members of his quartet are, and they got visas.
The USA Still discriminates against Vietnam (social security benefits cannot be sent there; the US military still thinks it “won”). Biden is no different than Trump on this. Biden will use Vietnam as a proxy against China, however.
The irony is that the US southern border, largely for political reasons, is pretty much wide open.
Meanwhile, the federal bureaucracy (state and local too) is very ethical, very benevolent and mostly free of corruption.
Eat your heart out, banana republics!
The irony is that right wing ideologues mindlessly mouth the talking points that have been drilled into them without troubling themselves to determine if they are actually true. More than two million people were apprehended at the southern border in fiscal 2022. More than half of them were immediately expelled; a significant majority of the rest were denied entry after due process. Which by no definition is “pretty much wide open”.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-ramps-up-immigration-arrests-mostly-mexican-border-2022-12-30/#:~:text=U.S.%20Border%20Patrol%20agents%20apprehended,under%20the%20Title%2042%20policy.&text=Those%20not%20expelled%20are%20either,claims%20or%20detained%20by%20ICE.
As opposed to a leftwing ideologue, someone possibly such as yourself?
However, if you at least realize that your political biases don’t make you necessarily honest, sensible, ethical and empathetic, that will be your taking the first step in a 10-step recovery program.
It is too late now for this tour, but one idea for future ones is to have people here in the US, who are connected with the whole endeavor (concert presenters, venue administrators, possibly even fans or supporters) contact their congressional representatives or even senators about the problem, preferably as early as possible, to help disentangle and rip away whatever ridiculous red tape is gumming up the system. I do not know if this would work, but it’s certainly possible.
He could have gone to Mexico, walked across the border faked being an asylum seeker and demanded transport to their first venue claiming he had relatives their. He might have received a free cellphone to go with the free transport. On second thought, he actually had a reason for being in the US and was willing to pay his own way. Guess that would not have worked.
Yes, he could have tried that. It also could have failed. He also could have gotten robbed, ‘pimped’ across the border (extortion), or even stabbed.
Just heard the Danish quartet and the Jerusalem Quartet last weekend in the US. How did they do it? Still, its bad bureaucratic behavior that this keeps happening to you.
Inexcusable! American musicians freely tour France and the world. A quartet is a finely crafted ensemble that takes years to develop. The impact of a single substitution will have a detrimental impact on the whole. Shameful bureaucratic blunder!
The system is not broken nor is Biden’s fault as many people here would want it to to be. There are lots of things that can make CBP suspicious maybe: he missed some documents or did not convince officials that he would leave the US after the concerts, his file could also contained info such such as overstayed a tourist trip, forgetting to return an I 94 permit upon departure, failure to declare and apple or a ham sandwich, or maybe he was arrested or has some legal issues in France. believe it or not those are considered offenses as far as immigration is concerned. Agents who work ay CBP assume that every foreigner entering the US has the intention of remaining here and is the applicant’s responsibility to prove otherwise. Claiming to be a famous actor or performer is not a convincing argument. What they don’t say it that CBP would normally give a second chance requesting what they call ‘additional evidence’ that maybe was not provided within a specific time frame.
He should ask to see his police record and credit report to make sure there is nothing in there that is false.
Also, maybe he interviews badly.