by: Ilya Shapiro

That’s the title of a Wall Street Journal article detailing the latest idiocy to come out of our immigration system.  It seems that if you’re a musician trying to get a visa to perform in the United States, you have to prove to some bureaucrat’s satisfaction that your music either is “culturally unique” or has “achieved international recognition and acclaim.”  (Query: Does the Department of Homeland Security now require immigration caseworkers to have degrees in musicology or fine arts?)

The article chronicles the various travails of performers who are either so innovative — perish the thought! — as to not fit into an easily defined cultural category or haven’t yet reached U2-like levels of popularity. 

Reads one denial: “The evidence repeatedly suggests the group performs a hybrid or fusion style of music … [which] cannot be considered culturally unique to one particular country, nation, society, class, ethnicity, religion, tribe or other group of persons.”

Reads another: “Being internationally acclaimed is not equivalent to performing on stages overseas.”

You can’t make this stuff up!  It reminds me of my own immigration plight – which ended happily earlier this year — whereby I shot myself in the foot by, among other ridiculous things, getting my education in the United States instead of acquiring legal expertise abroad (at lesser institutions, making myself less valuable to the U.S. legal market).

I’ve heard some talk that Congress will take up immigration reform after it finishes with health care, though I can’t imagine that happening in an election year.  In any event, I’ve long believed that our immigration non-policy is the worst part of the U.S. government (which should say something, coming from someone at Cato).