Are you a foreign born film or television professional looking to further your career in the U.S.? If so then this article might be of interest to you. Let us consider one of the most appropriate visa types available in this area, the O Visa.

The O-1B Visa category is intended for those persons with proven extraordinary achievement in Motion Picture or TV productions.

So how does one prove that you have reached a demonstrated level of prominence in your field enough to qualify for an O-1B visa? Well, the regulations are structured in a manner that provides an applicant with two opportunities to qualify.

The first, an extremely limited opportunity, requires an applicant to have received recognition for his/her work via a major nationally or internationally recognized award such as an Academy award or an Emmy or its equivalent.
The other, much more accessible opportunity to qualify for this visa requires an applicant to satisfy at least three of six suggested criteria. Note that although the regulations state that only three of these six need be shown, there are situations in which a well prepared petition will touch on more than just three of these elements where proper. So let’s briefly consider these six in turn:

The beneficiary of an O-1B visa petition must evidence, through a variety of possible evidentiary forms that he/she has:

1. Performed and will perform services as a lead or starring participant in a production or event that has a distinguished reputation;

2. Received national or international recognition for achievements (note that this does not have to rise to the level of an Academy award to be persuasive);

3. Performed or starred in a lead role for an organization that has a distinguished reputation;

4. A record of commercial or critically acclaimed success as evidenced via standing in the field, ratings, reviews, or through others forms of evidence;

5. Received recognition for achievements from organizations, critics, or other experts in the field via testimonials; and/or

6. Commanded or will command a high salary for services in relation to others in the field.

Accordingly, it is clear that one of the keys to a successful O-1B visa petition is to show that your degree of skill and recognition is above that level ordinarily encountered in the field. Generally speaking, the burden of proof that is required to be satisfied for an O visa petition in motion picture and television productions is somewhere in between the lowest level of scrutiny placed upon persons in the arts (which is a broad category) and the highest scrutiny which is placed on persons in the sciences, business, and athletics.

Hopefully this article was informational as a basic starting point for researching your O visa options. Please feel free to contact me directly with any questions or to let me know if this information was useful and if there is any interest in additional articles.

Hendrik Pretorius is an immigration attorney working with the immigration law offices of Muston & Jack, P.C. Working out of the firms Los Angeles area offices, located in Pasadena and Beverly Hills, Hendrik focuses in large part on visa petitions for those persons in the Entertainment Industry and the Arts. Feel free to contact Hendrik directly at hp@mj-law.com and visit www.los-angeles-immigration.com. Hendrik is also fluent in Spanish and Afrikaans having spent large parts of his life in South Africa, Argentina, and Mexico City.