In 1999, I moved from Canada to the United States to go to grad school. As many foreign students do, I stayed in the U.S. after I finished my degree in 2001 and thus needed a work visa. It was around that time that I met Nathan Waxman, an immigration lawyer who put together the paperwork for the jobs I took.
Nathan is awesome. He makes immigration and paperwork sound fascinating, not frightening, and he can talk about art with the best of them. So, I figured I’d sit down with him and Susu Durst, an Extraordinary Ability Specialist who works at his firm. I asked them to get me up to speed on the lastest immigration news for artists, and chat a little about what artists need to do to immigrate to the U.S. We spoke about all that, and even ended up discussing how the differences in Canadian and American culture have informed immigration policy. It was amazing.
