They came here with nothing but the clothes off their backs.
A shocking number of US visas reserved for artists of “extraordinary ability” are going to scantily-clad OnlyFans creators and other social media influencers.
It was once used to allow John Lennon stay in the country — but now is being used for the likes of “Bop House” stars who came to the US to make adult content.
Over half of clients seeking the coveted O-1B visa in recent years are either performers on the pornography platform or some other kind of online influencer, top immigration lawyers told the Florida Phoenix.
“It’s not just cat videos anymore, it’s social media influencers making lots of money,” Miami attorney Joe Bovino told the outlet, estimating that as much of 65% of his clientele seeking the O-1B were online content creators.
Some of OnlyFans’ most prominent names are immigrants living in the US — including the Mexican-born, NYC-based Yanet Garcia, who celebrated obtaining her US residency in December.
It remains unclear what kind of visa Garcia, who is also an actress, obtained.
Other foreign-based influencers working steadily in the US include the Canadian-born Aishah Sofey, who is a member of the Florida “Bop House” where numerous prominent OnlyFans stars live together.
Joyy Mei, who was born in China and is formerly a member of the “Bop House,” is another prominent example.
These influencers command 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 it becomes a basis for a potential visa application,” Bovino told the Florida Phoenix.
The US O-1B visa is one of most difficult to secure, and was first conceived around 1972 when Lennon was nearly deported and lawmakers realized there was no immigration policy that helped attract top artistic talent to the country.
By 1990 it was formally adopted, and was aimed to accommodate people “with an extraordinary ability in the arts or extraordinary achievement in motion picture or television industry.”
Qualifiers must meet certain criteria, which can include holding roles in prominent productions, national renown, a history of commercial and/or critical success, or high earnings from their field.
Though written to cover what are traditionally understood as artists — actors, musicians, painters and the like — social media influencers have been able to leverage their high paychecks, brand deals and follower counts
“I knew the days of representing iconic names like Boy George and Sinéad O’Connor were over,” said New York attorney Michael Wildes, whose father helped represent Lennon in the case that birthed the O-1B.
Instead, Wildes told the Financial Times that “scroll kings and queens” have come to dominate the O-1B field since the pandemic in 2020.
The State Department has issued 125,351 O-1 visas since 2017, though it is unclear how many of those were O-1A visas, which cover “extraordinary” people from fields like science, education, business or athletics.
But O-1 visa issuances have skyrocketed since 2000 — including a nearly 50% increase from 2014 to 2024.
Exactly how many of the recipients have been social media influencers is also unclear, but numerous attorneys have reported repping such clients from countries like China, Russia and Canada.
OnlyFans performers applying for O-1Bs have been somewhat declining since 2022 after some attorneys say the market became oversaturated, but others still fear the trend could be hurting the program that was intended for a very prestigious group of people who might otherwise not have a chance at coming to the US.
“We have scenarios where people who should never have been approved are getting approved for O-1s,” immigration lawyer Protima Daryanani of Daryanani Law Group told the FT.
“It’s been watered down because people are just meeting the categories.”
Others fear that measuring “extraordinary ability” by clicks and cash could be disastrous for artists.
“Officers are being handed petitions where value is framed almost entirely through algorithm-based metrics,” New York attorney Shervin Abachi told the newspaper.
“Once that becomes normalized, the system moves towards treating artistic merit like a scoreboard.”
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