Award-winning Australian comic Alice Fraser has canceled an upcoming journey to New York to advertise her new e book, citing issues that her previous jokes about President Donald Trump and Elon Musk — the world’s richest particular person and a distinguished Trump ally — might create issues for her with U.S. border officers.
Fraser outlined a number of components behind her resolution in a publish on Patreon final month, explaining why she’d pulled the plug on a promotional go to for “A Ardour for Ardour: A Delirious Love Letter To Romance.”
Among the many causes: the collapse and “rebirth” of her writer, restrictions on doing unpaid promotional work underneath the U.S. ESTA Visa Waiver Program and the $3,000 price of making use of for a piece visa.
However a significant concern, Fraser mentioned, got here after she sought authorized recommendation from an immigration lawyer in regards to the potential penalties of her satirical, Trump-mocking materials.
The lawyer, she wrote, “couldn’t assure that having made publicly obtainable jokes that may very well be thought-about important of the administration wouldn’t rely in my disfavour within the utility” to enter America.
Fraser recalled asking what she thought was a “foolish, paranoid query” about whether or not her jokes about Trump and Musk would possibly trigger points. However the lawyer took it severely, warning her that border brokers will “undoubtedly google you,” and that choices would in the end be as much as the discretion of the visa officer or the particular person assessing her on the border.
Chatting with The Guardian in an article revealed Thursday, Fraser admitted she was stunned by the warning ― which comes amid current stories of vacationers and authorized immigrants going through hassle on the border, being denied entry or detained.
“I believed I used to be being paranoid,” Fraser mentioned, noting how the lawyer admitted that whereas “the overwhelming majority of individuals will have the ability to journey out and in … they’re undoubtedly doing elevated scrutinising.”
Fraser added that she may need been “extra open” to taking the chance if she didn’t have two younger kids. She advised The Guardian she nonetheless hopes to go to the U.S. sooner or later — however solely “when it’s now not affordable for a visa lawyer to say I ought to purge my social media earlier than I’m going there as a result of a joke about Elon Musk is likely to be thought-about hostile to the nation.”
Fraser didn’t instantly return HuffPost’s request for remark.
