An Australian comic has canceled a trip to the U.S. after claiming legal advice warned she could be stopped at the border due to her previous jokes about President Donald Trump’s administration.
Stop laughing, she’s serious.
The Guardian reports Alice Fraser, who has appeared on Australia’s national broadcaster ABC and the BBC while also internationally, was due to head to New York in May to promote her new book, A Passion for Passion: A Delirious Love Letter to Romance.
According to the outlet, the stand-up planned to apply for an O-1B visa, which permits comedians to live and work in the U.S. if they demonstrate “extraordinary ability” in the arts.
Fraser sought advice from an immigration lawyer as she thought she was being “paranoid” about her concerns. Left “upset and disappointed,” this is what she told the Guardian:
I asked [the lawyer] what I thought was a ridiculous question – that I do political satire and have a fair few jokes floating around on Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and whether that would be a risk.
I thought I was being paranoid, but she said it might [pose a risk] and they’d almost certainly Google me. She said while the vast majority of people will be able to travel in and out … they’re definitely doing increased scrutinising.
If I didn’t have two children, I might be more open to taking a risk, but the vision of me being there with a baby strapped to me and held up and hassled, or worse … I’m not up for that.
Fraser has been a regular critic of Trump as a contributor to political podcasts and radio shows, telling the Sydney Morning Herald in 2020: “I wouldn’t take an IOU from Trump if he wrote it on the money he owed me.”
Timid Alice said she is still open to visiting the U.S., but only when jokes about Trump and Elon Musk she says are not “considered hostile to the nation.”
