Most lowly people from parts of the world that are places of issue and hotbeds for terrorist activities, usually have a very hard time getting visas to go to America. As terrorism threats are on the rise worldwide, the easy movement of people into and out of America has become severely restricted. There are two compelling sides to this argument but you might ask how does this relate to sports and why am I reading about terrorism and visa issues. All will be revealed in good time, well in the next paragraph, so read on.
This article began because of a boxing story that was about Amir Kan, the current WBA light-welterweight boxing champion, waiting for his clearance to enter the US. The issue was that even though Khan currently resides in America and is promoted there by an American promotion company, he still needed clearance to get into the country. The reason why there was an issue with it was because Amir Khan has convictions for driving offenses in the UK and this was flagged as an issue by American immigration authorities.
What is odd about this story is that Amir Khan is a well known boxer and the current WBA light-welterweight champion of the world and he still had issues getting into America. That is very hard to understand, because first of all Khan is a British man who is coming to the States to fight in a highly publicised and prized boxing match. It would be a lot more understandable if Amir Khan had been a normal guy named Jamal Khan from Pakistan who worked as a grocery shop assistant and was trying to get a visa to go to America and was having issues.
A few things could have happened in this scenario. Firstly the person checking his immigration papers was a real stickler for the rules and since it becomes a lot harder to get a visa if you have any sort of convictions even driving offenses, the immigration officer decided that rules were rules no matter who the person applying for the visa was. That is a pretty noble thing but it doesn’t seem likely. Next it might have been that the immigration officer was not a fan of boxing and hated the sport. Since he/she didn’t like the sport to begin with and didn’t like boxers, Khan had the odds stacked against him. If it had been someone who was a huge boxing fan and followed the sport religiously, Khan would have had no trouble getting a visa. Finally it could have gone down that the immigration officer simply lumped his application in with all the other applications from the UK and didn’t give it any sort of priority. It doesn’t seem likely that a British person would ever have a hard time getting into America but now that things have become even more dangerous and hairy in terms of worldwide terrorism, it seems that even members of another developed, western nation have a difficult time with visa applications.
This could make all the rest of us who always have visa issues and immigration trouble whenever we travel abroad happy that the system doesn’t discriminate against us and seems to favour famous people. On the other hand we could be saddened by this development and think that the situation has gotten so dire in terms of visas that even someone as famous and well known as Amir Khan, a professional boxer can have visa issue then where does that leave the rest of us. It has always been the case that a person with a lot of money, property, and business dealings didn’t have visa issues, but if someone like Khan can be stopped then it seems that anyone can be refused a visa and everyone becomes equal in the eyes of the immigration authorities of America. We can only hope that this visa processing issue becomes easier and less stringent in the future and not harder, because as we can see it seems to be getting harder. But Khan did manage to get a visa to enter the country and if that is any sign to go by we can all hope that if we too have something great to offer people like phenomenal boxing skills, we too will never again have visa issues.
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