Arts Outcry Over Tough Visa Rules : Foreign artists: Proposed Immigration and Naturalization Service regulations would limit visiting orchestras, dance and opera companies.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has completed draft regulations that would sharply cut the number and variety of foreign soloists, orchestras and opera companies that could get visas to perform in the United States, major arts groups asserted here Friday.

The proposed new regulations, prepared by INS in response to legislation enacted late last year, would set new quotas on the number of performers permitted to visit the United States. Arts groups fear that the rules might lead to other countries setting new limits on American performers overseas.

The INS said the rules are mandated by little-noticed provisions of the bill passed in October. Among other things, they would prohibit visiting opera companies, ballet companies and orchestras from applying for visas until 90 days or less before their scheduled performances.

The provision could make it impossible to set advance bookings, complained major arts groups here for a meeting of the advisory board to the National Endowment for the Arts. Orchestra, opera and dance seasons are routinely planned years in advance.

The regulations, according to internal INS discussion papers released here Friday, would also limit to 25,000 the number of foreign orchestra and opera company members who could enter the United States in any year--with visas awarded strictly on a first-come, first-served basis. Arts advocacy groups asserted that, under existing INS visa rules, 78,000 artists visited the United States in 1988 in visa categories that would now be restricted to 25,000 annually.

“This is a very major issue. It strikes at the root of freedom (of artistic expression), of what America has been noted for,” said Ardis Krainik, director of Chicago’s Lyric Opera and a member of the National Council on the Arts, the NEA advisory board.

The NEA board unanimously passed a resolution to “urge in the strongest possible terms that immediate action be taken to address the negative impact of these provisions on the nonprofit arts community.” The resolution contended that the pending INS proposal “devalues the artistic integrity of American cultural institutions.”

According to the internal INS documents, the toughened rules would also:

* Set stricter new standards that would require solo performers to provide evidence of having won major awards, such as the Nobel Prize, or to have provable evidence of large box-office receipts or strong television ratings in order to qualify for entry.

* Require that members of ballet companies, orchestras and opera companies prove they had been continuously associated with the group for at least a year. The provision would appear to restrict the ability of choreographers, soloists or even recently hired or relatively inexperienced performers to work in the United States.

The regulations could play havoc with performance-hall schedules, contended officials of Opera America. The national organization, which includes the nation’s major opera companies, said that inability of companies to obtain visas late in any calendar year could prove disastrous.

The proposed restrictions on solo artists, according to officials of Opera America, the American Symphony Orchestra League and the American Arts Alliance, would impose new standards on musicians and singers to meet heightened standards of prominence before they could be considered for a U.S. visa.

Joining the protest was the National Assn. of Performing Arts Managers and Agents, which released a statement warning of a “significant impact” on the booking industry. Arts organizations spokesmen said they were considering asking Congress to nullify the new revisions in the immigration law on which the pending regulations are based.

At the INS, a spokesman said the proposed new visa restrictions had completed final review by the Justice Department, which must concur with any proposed new regulations, and were sent for final approval to the White House Office of Management and Budget on April 15. A spokesman declined to predict when the new rules might be cleared by OMB. Once they are, he said, the immigration service would publish them and begin a 45-day public comment period during which opponents could urge changes.

“There has always been a controversy over entertainers,” the INS spokesman said. “The attempt here is to reduce the controversy and standardize (things) when we apply these (regulations). As everything that INS does, there will be a debate over whether we have been too generous or too restrictive.”

Mark Scorca, executive vice president of Opera America, and Merianne Glickman, the NEA’s director of international activities, asserted that the restrictions could make it impossible for emerging international musicians to get visas. Scorca said changes in the immigration law passed last year had been intended to more effectively regulate foreign professional athletic teams and commercial artists, including rock bands and film and television actors and production personnel.

“Unfortunately, the (serious) performing arts have been caught” in the squeeze generated by what arts groups contend is overly broad wording in the new legislation, Scorca asserted. “We would simply not be able to get visas for the majority of artists” whose work is routinely seen by American audiences now, Scorca contended.

Anne Murphy, executive director of the American Arts Alliance, said the effect of the proposed visa rules on serious performance arts was apparently not intended by Congress. “There are unintended consequences here,” she said. “The general sweep of (the new rules and the legislation behind them) does not take into account the nonprofit arts community.”