T. Thomason’s US touring visa doesn’t expire until June—but the Canadian pop artist is pulling out of a festival appearance in Belfast, Maine, next month because he doesn’t want to be targeted at the border as a nonbinary trans man.
Last week, Thomason, 30, who splits his time between Toronto and Wolfville, Nova Scotia, announced he had dropped out of the All Roads Festival, which takes place May 16-17. He tells WIRED he made the decision after seeing President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting the trans community, including one proclaiming that the US government will recognize only two sexes, male and female. He’s also been increasingly fearful after hearing stories of visitors, US visa-holders, and applicants being held at the border, including a Vancouver woman who told The Guardian she was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for two weeks.
“I just thought if that’s happening to cis people, I really feel worried about what could happen to me,” Thomason says.
Toronto- and Montreal-based singer Bells Larsen, a trans man, also announced Friday that he is canceling his spring tour because the gender on his passport, male, does not match his assigned sex at birth, potentially disqualifying him from being eligible for a US visa under the Trump administration’s new rules. Aya Sinclair, a London-based musician and trans woman, told Pitchfork she’ll be avoiding American shows “until anything changes.” Even Neil Young, a dual Canadian-American citizen, has said he’s worried about being “jailed” upon returning to the States, due to his criticisms of Trump.
But the decision not to play in America means foregoing touring income and the opportunity to build one’s fanbase in the largest music market in the world. And simply rerouting to Europe or elsewhere abroad, particularly for Canadian artists, is a costly endeavor.
The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada, a union that can petition the federal government to grant touring visas, told Canadian members in late March that the updated immigration rule “runs afoul of our shared values. At this time, it is unlikely the US government will pivot from this objectionable position.”
Los Angeles–based entertainment attorney Dani Oliva, a trans man, tells WIRED “there’s been a general panic” among his clients in the past few weeks. Oliva, who is Thomason’s lawyer, notes that Canadian musicians who want to play in the US have two options for visas, one of which costs up to $8,000 and is “extremely onerous.” He says processing times for his clients have jumped from three or four months to eight to 10 months without paying for expedited processing.
He says he does a risk-versus-benefit analysis for each client looking to come to the US. But he’s worried that trans clients’ visa requests could be denied on the grounds of “misrepresentation or fraud” if the gender on the identifying documents they submit doesn’t match up with their assigned sex at birth. That finding could result in a person being banned from the US for life unless they successfully apply for a waiver—a cumbersome process.
Despite the headaches of getting a US visa, there’s a reason people do it: money and cultural cachet.
“Let’s be real. I mean, so many artists only find their breakthrough if they tour in America,” says Kurt Dahl, a Vancouver-based entertainment lawyer. “There’s 10 times the population; it’s just more likely to get press and get attention.”
While he says almost every Canadian he knows, artist or not, is reevaluating taking trips across the border, some of his clients’ fanbases are 80 percent American.
“I just see them sort of scrubbing their social media, scrubbing their cell phone of anything that might be considered controversial, and then sort of rolling the dice.”
There’s also the geography. In Canada, he says, sometimes a band is driving 10 hours to the next city, whereas in the US they might be able to hit 30 cities in a much shorter span.
Thomason says Trump’s border crackdown has forced artists like him to rethink goals they’ve been working toward for “years and years and years.” He says he won’t be entering the US as long as Trump is president. Even if he wanted to tour here, he believes any of his new visa applications would be denied because he’s changed the gender marker on his passport to male.
“The end goal for a lot of artists is to end up in places like New York or LA and build their careers out from there. It’s kind of taking your dreams and completely changing them.”
He says he’s “really, really sad” that his connection to his US fans is being “severed” at a time when he was just starting to build it. His friend and fellow artist Larsen, meanwhile, noted on Instagram on Friday that he was hoping to play his album Blurring Time “for queer and trans people in the US who saw their stories reflected in my own.” The album blends Larsen’s vocals both pre- and post-transition.
To help make up for the income loss, Thomason is advocating for Canadian arts groups to develop new funding streams for trans artists. But he also says this is an issue that will go far beyond trans artists in Canada, or trans people around the world.
“This is a country undermining the validity of a government-issued document by another country,” he says. “If people think that starts and stops with trans people, they’re wrong.”
Manisha Krishnan
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