NEWS & POLITICS

in Teatro Vista’s The Dream King and works for a nonprofit arts and culture organization, on top of her teaching gigs. But any money Cheng saves over the next few years will likely get drained when she reapplies for the O-1B, in 2026. Between legal fees and USCIS processing fees—which are currently pending a nearly fourfold increase, from $460 to $1,655—O-1 applicants typically pay between $3,000 and $8,000 during the application process. When they reapply, they must pay that amount all over again.

“It’s a huge, huge stress, not knowing where you will be, if you can pay your rent, and relationship-wise, you feel put on edge . . . You have to do a lot of side gigs here and there. The outcome is burnout, all the time,” Cheng says.

Gonzalez-Cadel initially came to the U.S. from Argentina as a dependent on Gueglio’s student visa. When the couple moved to Chicago for Gueglio’s Ph.D. program, his university funding allowed Gonzalez-Cadel to qualify for a J-2 visa, a status which allowed her to find employment. For years, she worked as a beloved Zumba instructor at the University of Chicago while building her acting résumé. But when Gonzalez-Cadel and Gueglio had to switch to O-1Bs, the new visa stipulations meant that Gonzalez-Cadel had to walk away from a job she loved.

“I had to stop teaching Zumba, because teaching Zumba was not acting,” Gonzalez-Cadel says.

That same year, Gonzalez-Cadel tried to join the Actors’ Equity Association, the stage actors’ union which secures job protections for members and betters one’s chances of being considered for higher-earning Equity shows. But because of her visa status, Gonzalez-Cadel’s first attempt to join the union was denied.

“I found out Equity would only accept me while I was in contract, and then would force me to go into temporary withdrawal in between contracts. I wouldn’t be considered a full union member,” she says. “I was heartbroken. I couldn’t understand why, as an artist working under an artist visa in the United States, I wasn’t allowed to have the same worker protections as my peers.”

In response, Gonzalez-Cadel joined a campaign organized by other immigrant actors to advocate that Equity change its union bylaws to grant membership to actors with O-1 visas, which it finally did in 2021.

“I try to be a voice in every room that I’m in. I’m part of the local board of directors at

SAG-AFTRA, and I say, ‘Well, what about us? What about the folks that are here working?’” Gonzalez-Cadel says.

Between the visa’s work restrictions and steep legal and processing fees, the O-1B is biased towards independently wealthy artists, or artists who are high earners. That wasn’t the story for most of the artists interviewed for this feature, who emphasized again and again how lucky they were to land a job in their field, find a ordable legal counsel, or to have relatives who could front USCIS’s steep application fees.

“[The O-1B] is built for folks that have financial access. If you can’t bag groceries at Trader Joe’s to supplement your income, who will supplement your income?” Gonzalez-Cadel says.

As if seeking employment in the arts isn’t hard enough, some O-1B artists told the Reader they’d experienced discrimination on the basis of their visa status during job searches. Both Sha and Cheng have had employers abruptly stop corresponding with them well into a hiring process after learning they were in the U.S. on a visa. But an O-1B doesn’t operate like an H-1B visa, for which an employer typically assumes any application, processing, and legal fees incurred on behalf of a full-time employee. The O-1B makes no such demands of an employer. When it comes time for the visa holder to reapply for the O-1B, however, the applicant may circle back to the employer to request written evidence that they are, or were, employed by the organization—comparable to a standard background check.

“People tend not to be informed about the legalities of the visa, and I think folks would rather not go the extra mile to figure out what the law actually says. You have to become your own advocate and say, ‘Here’s why it’s fine to hire me,’” Gonzalez-Cadel says.

But what is a boon to employers comes at a steep cost to artists. O-1B applicants enjoy more flexibility by being able to seek work from multiple employers, but unlike an H-1B visa, they must shoulder any application fees themselves. Moreover, some O-1B artists report requesting proof of employment from employers and never hearing back, the employer possibly mistaking their requests for one of fiscal sponsorship.

Unbeknownst to many employers, because USCIS gauges an applicant’s merit by their résumé, that written proof can make or break a visa application. Brazilian multimedia artist Carolina Pereira, whose show “Fuzzy Memories” recently closed at Povos Gallery in West Town, works in the unique overlap of tufted rug art and neon sculpture, the two combining in evocative, dreamy tableaus. Her O-1B status is tied not just to her exhibitions but to her day-to-day work as a graphic designer for the Chicago Sinfonietta, a job she believes single-handedly boosted her odds for approval.

Because of the rarity of O-1 visas, Pereira also had to walk her employer through the process.

“When you mention the O-1 visa, it’s very foreign to them. I’ve had to talk to [them] so they really understand that you don’t have to pay for the O-1. They might have to write a letter and sign some stu , but it’s not the same as the sponsorship,” Pereira says.

Applying for O-1B status as a multidisciplinary artist, as Pereira did, can present its own challenges. Cheng opted for a more expensive lawyer just so she could ensure that applying across her fields of expertise—dance, puppetry, and devised physical theater— wouldn’t hurt her application. After all, ev- erything would be measured against USCIS’s capricious standards.

“It’s a little bit tricky to prove I’m ‘extraordinary’ in each genre,” Cheng says. “I needed [a lawyer] to guide me through how to prove that ‘multidisciplinary’ is its own area.”

The O-1B offers an unparalleled opportunity for immigrant artists living in the U.S. Likewise, the talent the O-1B attracts is nothing short of extraordinary—a community Gonzalez-Cadel hopes to celebrate in a forthcoming podcast series on the subject called Extraordinary Aliens. Absent another path to permanent residence, or citizenship, however, artists could ostensibly run on the O-1B’s expensive treadmill for the rest of their careers. Nor does the process promise any abatement from the threat of deportation. Some interviewees say they’re hesitant to make friends or pursue romantic relationships knowing their reapplication could be rejected, and for circumstances that would seem arbitrary under any other visa.

Sha, who must reapply for the O-1B next year, has no close family and few job prospects in Beijing, where she grew up. Her friends and partner are here, where she’s built a life she could have never dreamed of as a young person.

But, as Sha told the Reader , she may not have a choice. Some days—the bad ones— going back to China almost seems easier than the vortex the O-1B has trapped her in.

“It’s just emotionally exhausting. From the first day that I arrived here, my first concern was to solve the visa problem,” Sha says. “Every minute of my life, my priority isn’t school, or making money, or my career. It’s always the visa.” v