Canadian musician Bells Larsen said on Friday that he has to cancel his upcoming U.S. tour dates over visa issues stemming from the Trump administration’s gender requirements targeting trans individuals.
Larsen, a trans man, shared a post on Instagram saying that the American Federation of Musicians had emailed him this week, informing him that he was “no longer able to apply for a Visa because US immigration now only recognizes identification that corresponds with one’s assigned sex at birth.”
“To put it super plainly, because I’m trans (and have an M on my passport), I can’t tour the States,” Larsen wrote. “I hesitate to include a ‘right now’ or an anymore at the end of my previous sentence, because — in this sociopolitical climate — I truly don’t know which phrasing holds more truth. The irony of this announcement falling exactly two weeks before the release of my album, which is about my transition, is not lost on me.”
President Donald Trump had signed an executive order back in January requiring documents including passports, visas and Global Entry cards to reflect a person’s biological sex. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services updated its policy last week to reflect that executive order.
Larsen was originally planning to play U.S. dates this spring in Boston, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, among other markets, and he said that the requirement has “crushed my dreams.” “I’m cradling a very broken heart and the realization that I don’t know if or when I will be able to tour in the States again,” Larsen wrote. “I am not exaggerating when I say that I shaped my transition around Blurring Time. This album is, in many ways, my life’s work. I am more and more gutted with every day that passes by the (seeming) dissonance between the world in which I created this project and the world into which I am releasing it.”
The new immigration policies at large have given a sense of unease across the music industry. Neil Young — a dual-citizen of Canada and America — blasted Trump earlier this month, voicing his concern that he’ll be barred from re-entering the United States after his European tour later this summer. “If the fact that I think Donald Trump is the worst president in the history of our great country could stop me from coming back, what does that say for freedom,” Young wrote.
Larsen had said he was worried about whether to proceed with the tour or not prior to this week, referencing “border horror stories” and “troublesome updates on the news.” He said he was planning to tour “in the safest way possible,” but added that conversations with immigration lawyers, coupled with the email this week, had made it “clear to me that there was no way to move forward here.”
Larsen isn’t the only transgender performer in the entertainment industry who’s spoken out about the executive order’s impact on him. Back in February, Hunter Schafer said she received a passport listing her sex as male. “A letter and a passport can’t change that and fuck this administration,” Schafer wrote. “And I don’t really have an answer on what to do about this, but I feel it was important to share. This is real. So yeah, fuck.”
Larsen’s Canadian shows will go on as planned, and tickets are available on his website. He finished his note by encouraging Canadian musicians to support one another and “go to each other’s shows, check in on each other, and keep each other in the know about travel regulations so we can all make informed decisions in order to protect ourselves.”
“While it has been progressively nerve wracking, I will continue to be my most authentic self in the public eye in the hopes that others might find courage and solace in the music I make,” Larsen wrote. “I consider it an honour, a challenge, and a duty to bring queer joy, power, and catharsis to audiences through my project and I can’t wait to perform Blurring Time on stages across Canada this spring, summer, and fall.”
Read Larsen’s full letter below:
