Immigration Attorney Breaks Down Visa Challenges Impacting Regional Mexican Musicians: ‘The Burden Is on the Artist’

Immigration lawyer Lea A. Salama DiMitri of Behar Law Group joined Billboard’s elder exertion of Latin, Griselda Flores, during a sheet treatment astatine Billboard Latin Music Week 2025 connected Tuesday (Oct. 21). The brace unpacked the progressively analyzable realities of migration policies and visa restrictions for planetary musicians, peculiarly the alarming inclination of visa revocations among determination Mexican artists and beyond.

The conversation, which reflected the challenges Latin artists look erstwhile navigating U.S. migration procedures, highlighted the stringent requirements for O and P visas — non-immigrant visas specifically designed for artists, athletes, and entertainers — arsenic good arsenic the increasing risks tied to delays and denials. Salama DiMitri, a seasoned migration attorney, emphasized the trouble and multilayered process of securing these visas for planetary performers.

“Immigration operation is simply a multi-agency, multistep process. It’s not for the faint of bosom — it’s complex, precise daunting. It’s not similar filling retired a taxation return; the slightest misstep tin pb to a gargantuan process being enforced,” DiMitri explained. “Enforcement is the biggest inclination close now.”

Flores, who has extensively reported connected the question of visa revocations targeting determination Mexican musicians, asked DiMitri to supply penetration into musicians performing narcocorridos — songs with themes of organized transgression oregon cause commercialized — and whether their lyrics mightiness beryllium scrutinized nether U.S. nationalist information policies. “Singing narcocorridos tin beryllium seen arsenic a mode of impeding their state of speech,” Flores noted. “It’s timely however these visas person been revoked, particularly for determination Mexican artists.

DiMitri acknowledged this possibility, elaborating that aggregate factors, including an artist’s societal media activities oregon perceived governmental affiliations, tin present origin into the visa support process. “The U.S. Department of State precocious began requiring some O and P visa applicants to disclose their societal media handles,” she said. “With evolving exertion and AI, algorithms analyse people’s online beingness arsenic portion of the vetting process. These measures tin beryllium utilized to measure whether someone’s views — oregon adjacent their creator contented — airs a perceived menace to nationalist security.”

“For an O-1 visa specifically, applicants indispensable beryllium ‘extraordinary ability,’ which tin beryllium demonstrated done nationalist and planetary acclaim — for instance, if an creator has won a Grammy Award oregon achiev...