They came here with nothing but the clothes thrown off their backs.
A shocking number of US visas reserved for artists of “extraordinary ability” will be hanging scantily clad. Creators of OnlyFans and other social networks influential people.
It was once used to allow John Lennon to stay in the country, but is now being used for people like Stars of the series “Bop House” who came to the USA to make adult content.
More than half of the clients applying for the coveted O-1B visa in recent years are either pornography performers or some other Internet influencer, top immigration attorney. told Florida Phoenix.
“It's not just cat videos anymore, it's social media influencers who are making a lot of money,” Miami lawyer Joe Bovino told the publication, estimating that about 65% of his clients seeking O-1Bs were online content creators.
Some of OnlyFans' biggest names are immigrants living in the US, including Mexican-born and New York-based Yanet Garcia, who celebrated becoming a US resident in December.
It remains unclear what visa Garcia, who is also an actress, received.
Other influencers who work full-time in the US include Canadian-born Aisha Sophie, who is a member of the Florida-based “Bop House”, where numerous famous OnlyFans stars live together.
Chinese-born and former Bop House member Joy Mei is another prime example.
These influencers have millions of followers on Instagram, TikTok and OnlyFans, the latter of which allows users to post hardcore pornography and sexually explicit content.
“If you can make money there, suddenly that becomes grounds for a potential visa application,” Bovino told the Florida Phoenix.
The O-1B visa in the US is one of the most difficult to obtain and was first conceived around 1972, when Lennon was nearly deported and legislators realized there was no immigration policy that would help attract top artistic talent to the country.
By 1990, it was officially adopted and was aimed at people “with extraordinary ability in the arts or outstanding achievements in the film or television industry.”
Applicants must meet certain criteria, which may include participation in renowned productions, national fame, a history of commercial and/or critical success, and high earnings in their field.
Although it is written to reach those who are traditionally understood as artists – actors, musicians, painters and the like – social media influencers. were able to use Their high salaries, brand deals and followings demonstrate the success and recognition they need in their field, attorneys say.
“I knew the days of representing iconic names like Boy George and Sinead O'Connor were over,” said New York lawyer Michael Wilds, whose father helped represent Lennon in the case that gave birth to O-1B.
Instead, Wilds told the Financial Times that “scroll kings and queens” have come to dominate the O-1B field since the 2020 pandemic.
Since 2017, the State Department has issued 125,351 O-1 visas, although it is unclear how many of those were O-1A visas, which cover “eminent” people in fields such as science, education, business or sports.
But since 2000, the number of O-1 visas issued has increased dramatically, including a nearly 50% increase from 2014 to 2024.
The exact number of recipients who were social media influencers is also unclear, but many attorneys report representing clients from countries such as China, Russia and Canada.
The number of OnlyFans performers applying for O-1B has dropped slightly since 2022 after some lawyers said the market had become oversaturated. but others are still wary of this trend could have been detrimental to a program that was intended for a very prestigious group of people who would not otherwise have the chance to come to the United States.
“We have scenarios where people who should never have been approved are getting approved on O-1,” immigration lawyer Protima Daryanani of Daryanani Law Group told the FT.
“It’s been toned down because people just fit the categories.”
Others fear that measuring “extraordinary ability” in terms of clicks and money could have disastrous consequences for artists.
“Officers are being served petitions in which value is determined almost entirely by algorithm-based metrics,” New York attorney Sherwin Abachi told the newspaper.
“Once this becomes the norm, the system will begin to treat artistic merit as a scoreboard.”
