Foreign artists will no longer have to wait up to six months for their visas to visit the states. A bill passed by the US Senate last week requires that artist’s visa requests must be revised within one month allowing the artists to speedily and legally visit the US to give lectures, teach courses and complete residencies.

The 1,200-page bill, which offers a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, also requires the government to process artists’ visa requests within one month of their initial filing. Under the current system, artists can wait up to six months for a J1 or similar visa and must pay a fee of $1,225 to receive expedited service, a situation that causes several delays and issues when it comes to fast pop-up shows and the like, reports Julia Halperin in The Art Newspaper.

“This provision assures you get a decisive decision that would allow a non-profit arts organisation to plan whether they can expect to have an artist visit,” says Narric W. Rome, the senior director of federal affairs and arts education at Americans for the Arts, which has lobbied for more efficient visa processing for artists.

The passage of the Arts Require Timely Service (ARTS) Act, part of the immigration bill, “would be huge”, says Tom Finkelpearl, the director of the Queens Museum in New York. The amendment would enable museums to schedule foreign artists to give lectures, teach courses and complete residencies more easily.

The ARTS Act, meanwhile, has the potential to broaden the scope of multidisciplinary programmes at museums across the country. “The language of the arts is universal, and we know that the arts bring people together,” says Ford Bell, the president of the American Alliance of Museums. “The facilitated process could lead museums who invite performing artists from around the world to offer more of these kinds of programmes.”