The Palestinian singer-songwriter Marwan Abdelhamid, better known under the stage name Saint Levant, has announced he has postponed his debut North American tour after experiencing “major US visa issues”.
On Tuesday, in a post on the social media platform Instagram, Abdelhamid said the United States government had initially approved his visa application.
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But as his tour dates approached, he explained that he was “unexpectedly” asked to undergo additional background checks.
“After discussions with my legal team, and speaking with some of my Palestinian and Arab peers who have gone through similar experiences, my team and I have made the difficult decision to postpone my North American concerts until spring ۲۰۲۷, in the hope that the visa process will be completed by then,” he wrote.
The ۴۱-date tour was meant to be Abdelhamid’s biggest headline event to date. He was slated to travel across North America, Europe and the Middle East, with stops in US cities like Los Angeles, Brooklyn and Detroit.
But Abdelhamid’s decision to postpone his North American leg of the tour comes as part of a growing trend of performers having to cancel or reschedule their US-based events due to tighter immigration restrictions.
Since taking office for a second term, US President Donald Trump has taken multiple actions to limit entry to foreign nationals.
That includes suspending visa processing for nationals from ۷۵ countries, including Brazil, Afghanistan, Senegal, Uruguay and Thailand.
Last month, US District Judge Jeannette Vargas found that the policy had exceeded Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s mandate and struck it down as unlawful.
But it has also sought to revoke visas from successful applicants, and in August, after the court decision, it also paused visa appointments around the world to allow for “in-depth training” at consular offices.
With US visas becoming more difficult to acquire, some international artists, including musicians and comedians, are skipping US tours entirely.
Others warn that visa hurdles could add steep legal fees to tour budgets, making them cost-prohibitive.
The Tuareg-led guitar band Tinariwen from northern Africa was among the musical acts whose touring plans were thwarted by the immigration changes.
A manager for the group told The New York Times earlier this year that many of its members are from Mali, a country on the visa ban list. The band had to cancel its tour dates.
In August, Mexican singer Diego Millan, known as Calle ۲۴, also announced to fans on social media that his tour dates in the US would be nixed due to immigration issues.
“Due to unforeseen circumstances beyond my control, related to the unexpected revocation of my U.S. work visa, we have made the difficult decision to cancel our upcoming scheduled performances in the United States,” Millan wrote.
He added that he had the “utmost respect for the laws” and that his team was “actively working to resolve this matter”.
Critics, however, have expressed concern that the US is using immigration policies as a means of discriminating against certain groups or stifling viewpoints the government disagrees with.
Under Trump’s second term, the US has sought to revoke visas and green cards, which confer permanent residency, from people who have spoken in favour of Palestinian rights.
Scholars and students like Mahmoud Khalil, a former Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University, have been among the highest-profile cases. Members of the Palestinian Authority have also seen their US visas withdrawn.
In an executive order on the first day of his second term, Trump announced he would push to restrict visas from those who “espouse hateful ideology” or hold “hostile attitudes toward [US] citizens”, in order to safeguard the country.
Since then, Rubio has drawn on the Immigration and Nationality Act to deport pro-Palestinian voices who he claims would cause “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.
A judge last week, however, called such policies a violation of the US Constitution’s free speech rights.
Abdelhamid was born in Jerusalem to a French Algerian mother and a Serbian Palestinian father. His music often chronicles the Palestinian experience, including through descriptions of forced displacement and oppression, while sharing a sense of pride in his heritage.
His upcoming tour promotes the August ۲۱ release of his second album, AFANDI.
