Australia Tour Canceled

Without the Electronic Travel Authorization, I can't board the plane.

After a live interview on national television a few days ago, on Channel 1 yesterday they asked for submissions from viewers to create AI art in appreciation of me.  I find this so touching that it's hard to even mention it without feeling like a terrible braggart.

Oh, I'm talking about Channel 1 in Iran, of course -- such things would never happen to me anywhere in what they call the West.

In the West -- the land of freedom and democracy -- I'm never on national media of any kind, and on the rare occasion I am, the host of the show loses his job.

Iran is a country I've been invited to visit on multiple occasions over many years, and in the next few months, inshallah, I will.

In the West, although I've done many tours in many countries, there is always in the back, or front, of my mind the question of whether they're going to let me in this time.

I was banned from entering Canada on multiple occasions -- once banned for a year when I was heading north to receive an award from a Palestinian community center.  But Canada is nearby, so I kept trying again, and in recent years they eventually let me in consistently.

In 2013, with no explanation other than that it was clearly political, I was prevented from boarding a flight to New Zealand, by New Zealand Immigration.  As it was the first time I was turned away from the border with Alberta in 2002, it had nothing to do with work visa issues for musicians.  "You are not welcome in this country," I was told, point blank, over the phone, while waiting to board the flight from Tokyo to Auckland.  I haven't had a good chance to try again since.

Now it's Australia's turn, very unfortunately.

If you're from a country like the US or many others and you travel internationally much, you'll be accustomed to thinking of your US passport as your visa.  This is because if you travel with a US passport to places like the UK or the EU, your passport automatically comes with a three-month tourist visa.  Your entry into the UK or the EU may involve a brief interaction with a person in uniform who will ask you about how long you plan to stay and when you plan to go back home before they welcome you to wherever you are and stamp your passport.

If you're going to Australia, however, it's a bit different.  Folks from the US going to Australia need to apply for and receive that tourist visa that is automatically part of the deal elsewhere.

I'm one of many Americans traveling to Australia who has regularly forgotten all about this visa thing until they're at the airport.  I have often gotten to the airport and tried to check in to my flight, only to be reminded that I first need to apply online for an Electronic Travel Authorization, these days through an app.  I then apply for the ETA on the app and wait for the approval, which in the past always arrived within a few very stressful minutes.

It's especially stressful specifically because of the notification you get when you apply for your ETA on the app, when it tells you that it may take as much as 72 hours for your visa to be approved.  Obviously if you're trying to check in to a flight, you probably don't have 72 hours to wait for the visa to be approved, and you're spending those few minutes stressing about how you should have done it sooner.

I've been to Australia so many times I don't remember how many.  Since first going there in 2008 I have formed many close bonds, and developed a great affection for the place.

Every other time I've gone to Australia, that ETA was approved within minutes.  This time I had the foresight to apply for the ETA several days before the flight was supposed to go.

This time, instead of the approval coming a few minutes later, what came a few minutes later was a request for further information.  This was new, for me.  But I supplied the information they wanted, specifically the roundtrip plane ticket that demonstrated my intentions to return to the US after three weeks in Australia.

Since then I've been waiting, along with very frequently checking the Australian Immigration app, and signing in on the website to look for updates to the section where it tells me that my application, the attachments, and the fee were all received.

That's the status -- "received."  Not approved or rejected, just received.

It turns out that 72 hours reference is just a random number they throw out there.  On the website elsewhere it says that half of applications are granted within minutes, and 90% of them within 24 hours, but there's no time frame for when they have to either approve or reject your visa.  They can just leave you in limbo forever if they want to, as far as I can tell.

I applied on Tuesday.  As I write, it's now Sunday.  My flight to Australia leaves this evening.  I'll keep checking the app for last-minute miracles until it would be time to go to the airport if I were able to get on my flight, but if you're reading this, there was no last-minute approval.

Everyone's question, like mine, is why.  A random selection for further inspection combined with technical problems that caused a massive delay in operations?  A work visa issue?  Or is it political?

Until they actually reject my visa and provide an explanation for doing so, we'll probably never know.

What I do know is friends in Brisbane are facing possible jail time for saying the words "from the river to the sea" in public.

What I also know is someone on Facebook who is apparently an Australian supporter of Israeli settler-colonialism recently said they were going to contact their local member of parliament to make sure the government knew that I was coming, and that I was singing songs with banned phrases in them.

The rest can only be conjecture, for now.  What's not conjecture, however, is this tour of Australia won't be happening.

My deepest apologies and appreciation to all the folks who have been promoting the various concerts they've been organizing, which I was very much looking forward to showing up for.