The FIFA World Cup is the world’s biggest sporting event involving more countries than the Olympics and in 1994 was hosted by the United States with great success. For this reason the United States Soccer Federation was considering hosting the 2024 event where 48 countries would take part. This plan is now in jeopardy because of the immigration ban.
FIFA
As reported yesterday by the Guardian Gianni Infantino the President of FIFA, world football’s governing body, warned that the immigration ban on six Middle East countries would not be compatible with the federation’s event.
As he stated in London “Teams who qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup. That is obvious”
Iran, one of the countries listed in the ban, is a football powerhouse in the Middle East and Asia and has regularly qualified for the World Cup. With the expansion for the competition from 36 to 48 trams the likelihood of its eventual qualification is quite high.
Oscars
The world has already seen the effects of the immigration ban on important events during the recent Oscars ceremony. One of these was of the Iranian director Anouseh Andasri whose film “The Salesman” eventually won the Oscar for the best foreign film who was not allowed entry into the country to attend.
Such incidents can only do harm to the United States.
The ban is having effects of the country that its proponents would not have expected. Since no terrorists responsible for attacks on the United States have come from the countries named in the order, in the desire to avoid unlikely terrorist attacks the White House is turning America into a country that is increasingly seen internationally as paranoid and specifically in regards to certain categories of immigrants.
Costs
#Donald Trump’s original immigration ban has been blocked by the courts and a number of states, beginning with Hawaii, have presented challenges to the courts in regards to the new modified order. These show that the orders are suspect legally and constitutionally. They are also suspect due to their effects on the country.
The exclusion of the United States from any competition, or event due to the immigration ban would be a blow to the country’s prestige and reputation. In cases such as its exclusion as a host country of events such as the World Cup and other major sporting events, it would also come with a huge potential loss of income for the country.
The economic costs of the border wall and the immigration ban are still to be established and Congress and the Senate have still to be heard on the orders. But when they consider the costs of these matters they should not limit their considerations to the simple aspect of economic costs, but to all the other consequences that such decisions would have on the country.
Politicians are also judged by their capacity to understand the potential effects of their decisions. Do the Oval Office and the members of the Senate and Congress have the capacity to understand that one of the costs of the recent decisions will also be the country’s place in the world?
