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• May Bulman (@maybulman), Investigative Editor, Lighthouse Reports

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This episode was produced by our guest host, David Enders, Sarí el-Khalili, and Catherine Nouhan. It was edited by Alexandra Locke. 

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Iran’s football team still lacks US visas and is not competing on ‘equal terms’, Tehran’s envoy to Mexico says.

Iran’s football team still lacks US visas and is not competing in the World Cup on “equal terms” because of its difficulty in training ahead of the tournament, Tehran’s ambassador to Mexico said on Thursday.

Abolfazl Pasandideh visited the northwestern Mexican border city of Tijuana, where Iranians have relocated their training camp. They were originally planned to be based in Tucson in the US state of Arizona.

The ambassador told a news conference that “the country to the north” – meaning the United States – had not followed through on its responsibility of hosting the Iranian team.

“We don’t know whether or not they’re going to give the players their visas,” he added.

Iran will play their three World Cup group games in two West Coast US cities: Los Angeles and Seattle. The head of the Iranian Football Federation has said there was hope that the players would be granted multiple entry visas.

“We aren’t participating in the World Cup on equal terms,” Pasandideh said.

“We haven’t been able to train our team like they should,” he said, because of the US-Israel war on his country that began on February 28.

On Wednesday, Iranian diplomats visited the stadium where the team is training, a source from Club Tijuana that plays there told the news agency AFP. The diplomats also met with local security officials, the source said.

Iran are due to play in Los Angeles on June 15 against New Zealand, and on June 21, against Belgium. They then play in Seattle against Egypt on June 26.

Moscow’s envoy accuses Washington of failing to honour commitments under the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement.

Russia has slammed the United States for failing to grant a visa to Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alimov to attend a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York, calling the decision a breach of Washington’s obligations.

Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council on Tuesday that the country should have been represented by Alimov – “who oversees matters related to the United Nations” – at the meeting.

“However, despite all of our attempts to persuade the US side to issue a visa to him, that visa was ultimately not granted,” Nebenzia said.

The 1947 agreement that established the international body’s headquarters in New York requires the US to issue visas to foreign diplomats looking to attend UN functions “without charge and as promptly as possible”.

Nebenzia said not granting a visa to Alimov is a violation of that treaty and also a slight to Beijing, which is chairing the Security Council in May.

“We view this not just as a breach by Washington of its obligations under United Nations Headquarters Agreement, according to which access to United Nations needs to be provided for all officials and member states, barring none, but we also view this as an egregious instance of disrespect for the Chinese presidency of the Security Council,” he said.

The US Department of State did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The visa controversy comes at a time of receding tensions between Washington and Moscow as US President Donald Trump pushes to end the war in Ukraine.

Trump has been regularly speaking with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. But Washington has continued to enforce sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine invasion.

Both Putin and Trump have separately visited China and met with its president, Xi Jinping, in recent weeks.

Earlier this week, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Abbas Araghchi, the country’s top diplomat, cancelled his participation in Tuesday’s Security Council meeting due to visa issues.

During last year’s UN General Assembly, in September 2025, the US imposed strict limits on the movement of the Iranian delegation in New York.

In 2019, the US also delayed then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visa for the General Assembly but eventually granted him entry.

May 22 (UPI) — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Friday that people in the United States temporarily who want to apply for a green card will have to leave first.

USCIS said in a statement that people who have traveled to the United States on a temporary visa but want a green card to remain in the country permanently “must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances.”

The new requirement could make it more difficult to obtain permanent residency in the United States, and may lead to family separations and longer wait times, experts have said.

“This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes,” Zach Kahler, spokesperson for USCIS, said in the statement.

“When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the U.S. illegally after being denied residency,” Kahler said.

Kahler said that people visiting the country on visas for students, temporary workers or tourists “should not function” as the first step in the green card process.

The Christian humanitarian organization World Relief said in a statement that the change alters a “longstanding practice of allowing non-citizens who the United States lawfully and now qualify under U.S. law for lawful permanent resident status to ‘adjust status’ within the United States.”

There were about 1.4 million green cards granted in 2024, nearly 1 million of which were applied for and granted to people already residing in the United States, and at least 500,000 per year have received their cards the same way during the last two decades, The New York Times reported.

“Our consular processing system through which they would have to apply is already overburdened,” Sarah Pierce, a former policy analyst at USCIS, told The Times. “So that means we could have families separated for months or years.”

Iran’s national football team has arrived in Turkiye for a pre-World Cup training camp, but players are yet to receive visas for entry into the US. FIFA says it is confident Iran will be able to play in next month’s tournament despite the uncertainty.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is suspending a requirement that foreign visitors from countries that have qualified for the World Cup and have bought tickets for the soccer tournament pay as much as $15,000 in bonds to enter the United States, the State Department said Wednesday.

The department imposed the bond requirement last year for countries that it said had high rates of people overstaying their visas and other security issues as part of the Republican administration’s broader crackdown on immigration.

Travelers to the United States from 50 countries are required to pay the new bond, and five of those countries have qualified for the World Cup — Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia.

Citizens from those five countries who have purchased tickets from FIFA are now exempt from the visa bond requirement. World Cup team players, coaches and some staff already had been exempt from the bond requirement as part of the administration’s orders to prioritize the processing of visas for the tournament.

“The United States is excited to organize the biggest and best FIFA World Cup in history,” Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar said. “We are waiving visa bonds for qualified fans who bought World Cup tickets” and opted in to the “FIFA Pass” system that allows expedited visa appointments as of April 15.

The waiver is a rare loosening of immigration requirements under the administration and will ease travel burdens for at least some visitors to the U.S. for the World Cup, which begins June 11 and is co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The administration has taken dramatic steps to restrict immigration in ways that critics say are incongruous with the type of unifying message that a global sporting event such as the World Cup is supposed to project.

For instance, the administration has barred travelers from Iran and Haiti, though World Cup players, coaches and other support personnel are exempt. Travelers from Ivory Coast and Senegal face partial restrictions under an expanded version of that travel ban, even without the visa bond exemption.

Foreign travelers also are facing new requirements to submit their social media histories, while the administration had deployed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at airports recently when Transportation Security Administration personnel were not being paid.

Those measures prompted Amnesty International and dozens of U.S. civil and human rights groups to issue a “World Cup travel advisory” that warns travelers about the climate in the U.S.

In a report this month, the main advocacy group for U.S. hotels blamed visa barriers and other geopolitical issues for “significantly suppressing international demand,” leading to hotel bookings for the soccer tournament that are far below what had initially been anticipated.

The American Hotel & Lodging Assn. said travelers are concerned about potentially lengthy visa wait times and increased fees, along with uncertainty about how they’re being processed to enter the U.S.

The bond requirements are part of the administration’s larger effort to clamp down on migrants who travel to the U.S. on temporary visas but then overstay them. Visa applicants from the affected countries are required to pay $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 in bonds, which will be refunded if the traveler complies with the terms of the visa or if the visa application is denied.

As of early April, the number of World Cup fans affected by the bond requirement was believed to be relatively small, perhaps only about 250 people, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. But they said that number was changing rapidly as more people buy tickets and some with tickets opt against traveling.

FIFA had requested the waiver, which had to be approved by the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, and was the topic of discussion at multiple meetings at the White House and elsewhere in Washington for several months, the officials said.

Kim and Lee write for the Associated Press.

On the first Sunday night of Coachella, headliner Karol G told her American fans, and her global audience, to keep fighting.

“This is for my Latinos that have been struggling in this country lately,” the Colombian superstar told the tens of thousands watching her in person, and many more on the fest’s livestream. She’d recently criticized ICE in a Playboy interview, but this set was about her fans’ resolve. “We want everyone to feel welcome to our culture, so I want everyone to feel proud of where you come from. Don’t feel fear — feel pride!” she said.

Any artist would be proud to play that caliber of headline slot. But right now, many foreign acts also feel fear — or at least wariness — about booking substantial tours in the United States. A year of brutal ICE raids, tensions at border crossings and policed political speech, coupled with sky-high prices for expedited visas, fuel and other touring logistics, could push international acts away from the U.S.

“The fears that ICE would raid shows didn’t really materialize, but there is a chilling effect,” said Andy Gensler, editor of the touring-biz trade bible Pollstar. “Trump’s only been back in office a year, so we haven’t fully seen the effects, but it does send a message that if you’re a political artist you won’t get a visa. With the economic shock of gas prices and tourism way down, the signifiers are out there.”

The music economy is still thriving in SoCal. Coachella sold out with record spending from fans, and fears that ICE might show up for a prominent Latin headliner proved unfounded. (The agency did not respond to a request for comment on Coachella, and Lt. Deirdre Vickers of the Riverside County Sheriff’s office said that their office “does not participate in immigration enforcement operations.”)

But in smaller venues featuring emerging and mid-tier global acts, some see trouble ahead.

Pollstar’s Gensler estimates that the total number of concerts in the U.S. they tracked for the first quarter of 2026 was down about 17% from last year. That could be due to many economic factors — but slower international touring could be contributing.

“The U.S. is still incredibly lucrative market, the arena and stadium level buildings are vast and you can make more money here than any market in the world,” Gensler said. “But I’ve heard anecdotally that fewer people are going to South by Southwest, and tourism from Canada is way down, and that includes music tourism to California. As barriers go up, and the economic shock of gas prices impacts touring, it’s hard to know how that will all shake out.”

Talent firms who specialize in bringing young acts to the U.S. began noticing pullback before this year’s festival season. Adam Lewis is the head of Planetary Group, a marketing agency that produces and promoting musician showcases in the U.S., with a significant roster of artists from abroad. He said that performers who ordinarily would leap at the chance to play U.S. festivals are taking hard looks at the payoffs and risks.

“Artists are thinking twice, based on what the government is doing right now,” Lewis said. “You can look at the economics — the fees are cost prohibitive to get a visa. People are scared, at the bottom line. Artists and industry people are afraid to come to the U.S. for any music event. The money is going elsewhere.”

South by Southwest, the March Texas confab for music, film and tech, was among the first festivals to feel a pinch this year. Several sources said they saw fewer foreign showcases and acts amid a broader culling of music. In 2025, Canada canceled its popular annual showcase, after deciding that hostile policies made the risks not worth the rewards. Many still pulled off successful events, but acknowledged the mood has shifted.

“The perception of how hard it’s gotten has taken root, and that has meant that not as many acts will take the chance on the threat of being turned away or risking future entry,” said Angela Dorgan, the director of Music From Ireland, the Irish Music Export office (which is funded by Culture Ireland). That organization has helped break acts like CMAT (a hit at Coachella this year) and Fontaines DC in the U.S.

“Artists want to continue to come here in spite of the trouble and not stay away because of it. There’s a unique pull to America for all Irish people, so we don’t want to see you hurting,” Dorgan said. ”Irish artists feel that their U.S. fans need music more than ever now and want to continue to connect with and support their fans.”

Takafumi Sugahara, the organizer of “Tokyo Calling X Inspired By Tokyo,” a Japanese showcase at South by Southwest, agreed: “Bringing artists to the United States has always been challenging when it comes to obtaining visas, but it feels like the process has become even more difficult than before — perhaps due to the current political climate under the current administration.”

Fans watch Karol G perform at the Coachella stage last weekend. “We want everyone to feel welcome to our culture, so I want everyone to feel proud of where you come from. Don’t feel fear — feel pride!” the Colombian superstar said.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

After high-profile incidents of tourist detainments and fear of reprisals for political speech, those worries and long-dreaded expenses may shift their priorities. “From my point of view, the impact of global conflicts or wars does not seem to be affecting artists’ decisions very strongly for now,” they said. “However, if the current situation were to worsen, it’s possible that we could begin to see that change.”

Coachella usually hits a few visa snafus every year (this year, the English electronic artist Tourist had to cancel. Last year, it was FKA Twigs). Yet the Grammy-winning Malian Algerian group Tinariwen had to cancel a major tour this year, after the Trump administration placed severe new travel restrictions on 19 countries, including Mali. Folk legend Cat Stevens scotched a book tour after visa problems. Outspoken acts like the U.K.’s Bob Vylan have been denied U.S. visas for criticizing Israel, and the Irish rap group Kneecap faced hurdles after their visa sponsor, Independent Artist Group, dropped them for similar reasons last year.

The Times spoke to one European band (who asked not to be named, for fear of reprisals from the U.S. government) who had a substantial tour of U.S. theaters booked last year, before their visas were denied just days before the tour was due to begin. They were forced to cancel those dates and reschedule for spring 2026, losing tens of thousands of dollars in up-front costs and non-refundable fees. (A performance visa routinely costs $6,000 with now-necessary expedited processing.)

“Our manager said, ‘This has never happened before, but even though you paid lot of money and the check cleared, you won’t have visas,’” the band said. They wondered if their pro-Palestinian advocacy might have played a role, but now believe it was due to changes in their application forms.

That small discrepancy “meant we lost tens of thousands of [dollars], which for a mid-tier band with a loyal cult following, was quite ruinous,” they said. “We had to put on fundraising shows to get to zero, then re-apply for visas, and paid four grand extra to expedite them. We took out a loan to pay it. We felt relentlessly fleeced,” they said. “We love the U.S., but now there is a reality in which we have to cut our losses and stop coming. A lot of bands are giving up on the U.S., for sure.”

“It’s a different feeling now where the U.S. government can do anything to us, and we just have to take it,” they added. “They’re moving the goalposts the whole time. It’s scary.”

That fate can befall even major acts, particularly those from Latin America.

Last year, superstar Mexican singer Julión Álvarez canceled his concert for a planned 50,000 fans in Arlington, Texas, when his touring visa was revoked. Grupo Firme faced a similar fate at the La Onda festival in Napa Valley. Los Alegres del Barranco saw their visas canceled after they projected an image of drug kingpin “El Mencho” during a concert.

“That was a moment where people realize how serious or scary it can get for promoters with this administration when comes to the visa situation, how quickly things can change and you can lose millions,” said Oscar Aréliz, a Latin music expert at Pollstar.

An act the caliber of Karol G might not face quite the same risks, though she told Playboy that “If you say the thing, maybe the next day you’ll get a call: ‘Hey, we are taking your visa away.’ You become bait, because some people want to show their power.”

If it can happen to a stadium-filler like Álvarez, it can happen to anyone. That might make some Latin acts prioritize other regions.

Bad Bunny demurred on touring the continental U.S. for fear of ICE raids at his shows, opting for a lengthy residence in his home territory of Puerto Rico instead.

Local Latin music hubs like Santa Fe Springs and Pico Rivera have suffered greatly under recent ICE raids and have seen fans retreat in fear. Las Vegas is a major touring destination for acts during Mexican independence celebrations in September, but now “it feels different,” Aréliz said. He expects the city — typically boisterous with Latin acts then — to lose a big chunk of music tourism from the north and south.

“Vegas’ top tourist countries are Canada and Mexico, so we’re going to see other countries benefit from this. If acts struggle to tour here because of the visa situation, they’re going to tour Mexico and Latin America instead,” he added.

Tours typically book a year in advance, so the full effects of the visa issues and ICE fears may not be felt until later in 2026 or 2027. The results of the midterm elections may change global perception of America’s safety. The country is still an incredibly valuable touring market for acts that can make it work.

But the world’s music community now looks at the U.S. like an old friend going through a rough patch: They’ll be happy to see us once we pull it together.

“Certainly over the last number of years in the U.S., we have been thinking of where we could find these new audiences for Irish music,” Dorgan said. “The unofficial theme of our at home showcase Ireland Music Week was, ‘America. We are not breaking up with you, but we are seeing other people.’”

April 16 (UPI) — The Trump administration on Thursday announced visa restrictions on 26 people across the Western Hemisphere as the State Department unveiled a “significant expansion” of an existing policy to deny entry to those accused of working with U.S. adversaries to undermine Washington’s interests in the region.

Those blacklisted were not identified in the State Department release, which said they were being punished for destabilizing U.S. regional security efforts, undermining U.S. economic interests, conducting influence operations targeting the sovereignty and stability of nations in the region or enabling adversaries to acquire or control key assets and strategic resources in the hemisphere.

“President Trump’s National Security Strategy makes clear: this Administration will deny adversarial powers the ability to own or control vital assets or threaten the security and prosperity of the United States in our region,” a State Department spokesperson said.

“The Department of State is working to advance American leadership in our hemisphere, protect our homeland and ensure access to vital routes and areas throughout our region.”

The blacklisting was permitted as the State Department said it was announcing “a significant expansion” of an existing visa restriction policy, one first announced in early September, permitting the Trump administration to deny visas to Central American nationals accused of undermining the rule of law in the region on behalf of China.

The move comes as the Trump administration seeks to expand its influence in the Western Hemisphere. Under what some administration officials have called the “Donroe Doctrine,” Trump has sought to reassert U.S. dominance in the region in the Western Hemispher and push back on foreign influence, invoking a modern corollary to the Monroe Doctrine of the 1820s.

That initial policy specifically targeted those in Central America who collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party, while the expansion includes anyone in the Western Hemisphere who aids any of the United States’ adversaries.

China protested the earlier version of the policy in November. In a statement from its embassy in Washington, Beijing said the United States imposed visa restrictions on nationals from Panama and other Central American nations over their ties to China.

“Turning visas into political leverage runs against #UN Charter and the principles of sovereign equality and non-interference,” the embassy said. “Central America is no one’s backyard.”