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By MATTHEW LEE
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has recognized a number of athletic competitions it classifies as “main sporting occasions” — other than soccer’s 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympic Video games — that athletes and coaches might be allowed to journey to the U.S. to participate in regardless of a broad visa ban on practically 40 international locations.
In a cable despatched to all U.S. embassies and consulates Wednesday, the State Division mentioned athletes, coaches and help workers for the World Cup, the Olympics and occasions endorsed or run by a protracted record of collegiate {and professional} sporting leagues and associations wouldn’t be topic to the complete and partial journey bans that apply to residents of 39 international locations and the Palestinian Authority.
Nevertheless, the cable made clear that overseas spectators, media and company sponsors planning to attend the identical occasions would nonetheless be banned except they qualify for one more exemption.
“Solely a small subset of vacationers for the World Cup, Olympics and Paralympics, and different main sporting occasions will qualify for the exception,” it mentioned.
President Donald Trump’s administration has issued a sequence of immigration and journey bans in addition to different visa restrictions as a part of ongoing efforts to tighten U.S. entry requirements for foreigners. On the identical time, the administration has been trying to make sure that athletes, coaches and followers are in a position to attend main sporting occasions within the U.S.
Trump’s Dec. 16 proclamation banning the issuance of visas to the 39 international locations and the Palestinian Authority had carved out an exception for athletes and workers competing within the World Cup, the Olympics and different main sporting occasions. It delegated a call on which different sporting occasions can be coated to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Wednesday’s cable lists the occasions which might be coated, together with “all competitions and qualifying occasions” for the Olympic Video games, Paralympic Video games, Pan-American Video games, and Para Pan-American Video games; occasions hosted, sanctioned or acknowledged by a U.S. Nationwide Governing Physique; all competitions and qualifying occasions for the Particular Olympics; and official occasions and competitions hosted or endorsed by FIFA, soccer’s governing physique, or its confederations.
The exemption additionally will cowl official occasions and competitions hosted by the Worldwide Navy Sports activities Council, the Worldwide College Sports activities Federation and the Nationwide Collegiate Athletic Affiliation in addition to these hosted or endorsed by U.S. skilled sports activities leagues such because the Nationwide Soccer League, the Nationwide Basketball Affiliation and Ladies’s Nationwide Basketball Affiliation, Main League Baseball and Little League, Nationwide Hockey League, Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League, NASCAR, System 1, the Skilled Golf Affiliation, Women Skilled Golf Affiliation, LIV Golf, Main League Rugby, Main League Soccer, World Wrestling Leisure, Final Preventing Championship and All Elite Wrestling.
The cable mentioned different occasions and leagues might be added to the record.
Of the 39 international locations, a full journey ban applies to Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and other people with Palestinian Authority-issued passports.
A partial ban is in place for residents of Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burundi, Cuba, Dominica, Gabon, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Mauritania, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Togo, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
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