For a World Cup host nation, the soccer is largely incidental. Even more obviously disposable are soaring ideas of bringing the international community together in a peaceful celebration of yadda yadda. In the case of the United States under the Trump administration, the point of hosting a World Cup is security theater. The nation's ideals have been whittled all the way down to the most petty shit imaginable: Hosting a World Cup forces the world to come to us when most would rather not, forces allies and enemies alike to grovel and flatter and suffer and whine at our caprice, all while we sit there with a finger jammed in our nose and our dick flopping out. It's a show not of strength but of power, something that tickles the groins of the coalition of landlords and aspiring landlords that is the main constituency of President Donald Trump.
Travel visas are a perfect tool for this campaign, because they are distributed by an opaque and impenetrable bureaucracy, they can be decided on a whim and then defended as if supported by sophisticated protocols, and they offer basically nothing by way of appeal or honest recourse. Last week, a bunch of Scottish soccer fans suddenly found that their travel permits to the United States, already approved months earlier, had been inexplicably reversed. Travelers from the United Kingdom are allowed to travel to the U.S. for 90 days without securing a visa if they pass an automated screening by a program run by the Department of Homeland Security, called Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). These Scottish fans passed the screening months ago, and subsequently booked thousands of dollars in travel arrangements, before learning just days before the start of the event that their status had suddenly been updated to "travel not authorized." Acting assistant secretary of Homeland Security Lauren Bis obviously could not "speculate" on what caused these reversals, but told the BBC that ESTA clearance "does not guarantee admission." This is backed up by the Homeland Security website, which warns that this sophisticated program, the purpose of which is to authorize visa-less travel to the United States, "does not determine whether a traveler is admissible to the United States."
Whatever the real value of ESTA, here it has produced a desirable outcome for the Trump administration: It has generated a news story about a layer of rigor hidden behind the formal process for entry into the United States, motivating actions the basis of which cannot be described with any specificity, or interrogated. Such layers may be necessary to immigration infrastructure for a nation so adept at birthing enemies, but for the power-mad they are a wonderland of opportunity. Journalists from Africa and Iran have been denied visas that would allow them to follow the teams they cover for the games those teams play inside U.S. borders, according to the International Sports Press Association (AIPS). According to a public letter to FIFA from AIPS president Gianni Merlo, in some cases those few journalists allowed in at all were given single-entry visas, meaning that if they follow their teams for games played in, say, Toronto, they will be disallowed from returning to the United States for subsequent matches. On its face this would seem a senseless and arbitrary limitation, and it is, but it's important to remember that all there is in this case is a face, a dumb sneering face, huge and jowly, without any deep serious purpose, indifferent to if not delighted by instances where an unwieldy system foists inexplicable burdens onto groups of undesirables.
It's telling that AIPS addressed its letter not to the Trump administration but to a couple of honchos in FIFA's media relations department. This stuff is so formally obscured, so nakedly subject to influence, and so obviously tainted by political grandstanding, that it would strike a perfectly serious professional association as expedient to direct its public appeals not to the actual governing jurisdiction, but to the regulatory authority of world soccer, whose spineless executive absolutely loves to brag about how recently he has thanked Donald Trump.
Also addressing immigration complaints to FIFA: Members of Iran's soccer team and federation, who in late May had to move their World Cup headquarters from Arizona to Tijuana as the U.S. sneered and postured and otherwise dragged its cartoonishly oversized-Florsheim-clad feet in issuing visas that would allow Iran to compete in the tournament. Iran finally arrived in Mexico Sunday morning, and to date is still confused about who from its delegation will be allowed to travel to match-sites inside the U.S., and how long they will be allowed to stay. Per The Guardian, one team spokesperson expressed belief that the team had been given multi-day visas for games in Los Angeles and Seattle, but on Saturday Iran's ambassador to Mexico said that the team's visa conditions made it so that they will be forced to cross the border the morning of each game "and we must leave the same day." An Iranian diplomat told state television that some 15 members of the team's support staff had been denied entry, leaving Iran to travel with just players and a few coaches.
Would FIFA intervene to get travel visas for African journalists and Iranian physios? Should that even be a thing? Would the United States listen at all? I have lost the ability to even imagine a world where this discussion is rational and serious. For now, FIFA wants to make clear that the deranged border policies of the nation chosen by FIFA's selection process to host its signature event are none of its business, telling The Athletic that these decisions are "ultimately consular and immigration matters," and thus out of FIFA's hands.
Having kneecapped in the tournament a nation that it has already pointlessly bombed to kingdom come, the U.S. wants to be clear that this is all about security. The Trump administration, according to an unnamed official, "will not allow the Iranian team to abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the United States under false pretenses." Presumably this should be interpreted to mean that Homeland Security has identified active terrorists among the training staff of the Iranian soccer team, now stationed just across the border, in Tijuana. Here I would make a crack about how the U.S. will naturally be invading Mexico at any moment to affect arrests of these individuals, but unfortunately, with these goons, you can't rule it out. It would be quite a show, and God knows there's an audience.
