A growing share of O-1 “genius” U.S. visas is going to foreign OnlyFans strippers and social-media influencers, according to the Financial Times.
The temporary O-1 visas are touted as a renewable visa for supposed geniuses in new technologies, software skills, or novel ideas. But the complexity makes the O-1 visa process vulnerable to fraud and cheating by determined migrants who have cash to buy fake credentials. That vulnerability forces U.S. officials to take great care as they review the visa applications that must be sent to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency.
But the online influencers and OnlyFans models have a critical advantage — they can simply display their hits, audience numbers, and revenue, according to the Financial Times:
High follower counts and big earnings can be used to establish commercial success, landing a contract to promote a certain brand can qualify as an endorsement of talent and being featured at a store opening could be considered starring in a distinguished production, said Fiona McEntee, founding partner of the McEntee Law Group.
“If you think about how many people are on social media every day and how few people actually make a living from it — it is really a skill,” she added.
The OnlyFans inflow is also edging out some of the Indians who are doing what they can to get around old and new curbs on Indian migrants, such as annual limits on each nation’s share of green cards, or the loose annual caps on the global number of new H-1B visas.
“Officers are being handed petitions where value is framed almost entirely through algorithm-based metrics,” said
“We have scenarios where people who should never have been approved are getting approved for O-1s,” immigration lawyer Protima Daryanani told the newspaper. Her client base includes artists with less clear measures of success, such as Italian sculptor Paola Pivi:
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