“The whole system is a kind of trap for the unwary,” says Geoffrey Smith, former board chair at The Washington Ballet and a lawyer who has worked on visa petitions for ballet dancers and companies for four decades. “I’m a lawyer who does this for a living, and I’ve still made a lot of mistakes. The government isn’t going to go out of its way to let you know that you’ve made a mistake or, for that matter, tell you how to fix it.