While it’s still too early to make firm decisions, many international teams are starting to think about travel plans for 2026.
Given the state of the American political situation are you still considering attending?
- Yes
- Maybe
- No
0
voters
10 Likes
You would be surprised how this doesn’t affect our decision making
38 Likes
I think this should be extended to all teams, given the extremism towards student’s identities at this point in Texas.
28 Likes
Isn’t Houston itself is pretty progressive though? I think the bigger issue is that it costs an arm and a leg to even make the trip in the first place unless you live right next to the city.
9 Likes
I think the question of what regional to attend would also be interesting to hear answers to since California is going to districts.
Which regional(s) are you considering traveling to attend?
e.g. Teams based in Mexico don’t need to answer Mexico
- Midwest - Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio
- South - Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee
- Northeast - New York, Pennsylvania
- West - Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Utah
- Hawaii
- Other Americas - Brazil, Canada, Mexico
- Other International - Australia, China, Turkiye
0
voters
1 Like
What specifically about the “American political situation” do you think would affect an international teams choice on whether or not to attend worlds?
8 Likes
If I were to guess it’d be the tightening of entrance into the country. You don’t want a person on your team to get turned around or detained at the airport
19 Likes
Same for us too. 
7 Likes
Travel bans, embassy closures, visa revocations, visa delays, clampdowns on free speech, detainment of foreign nationals in the US legally, denial of legal counsel to detained individuals, inhumane treatment of detainees, and (of course) principled opposition to US foreign policy.
55 Likes
The key factor affecting whether we go abroad to play is how much money we have, not political factors.
14 Likes
If I were a coach/mentor/teacher in a civilized country, I would not be willing to send high-schoolers into a hostile dictatorship that they might not be able to get out of.
17 Likes
You guys vastly overestimate the amount the rest of the world cares about your internal politics and vastly underestimate your global marketing dominance.
50 Likes
Haven’t you specifically cited the time it takes to process US visas as a barrier to Turkish teams participating in US events before?
10 Likes
That would be your external politics. And that’s about the only thing that will stop people from the vast majority of the world besides money.
12 Likes
As you can see American politics, especially in its current iteration, does not have much distinction between internal/external politics. When a new administration is brought in it’s chaos and to any outside country it seems like we (the country as a whole) are a wishy-washy mess that can’t even decide what the rules should be. It’s not conducive to long term planning or having confidence in the situation remaining semi-stable by the time your long term plan is to take effect. It can feel like every day someone is flipping a bunch of switches on and off with no consideration for what is being affected.
As an American I don’t have confidence that by April the current rules will still be the rules. They weren’t the same rules as of a few weeks ago. There is a new full or partial entry ban for 19 countries:
Countries facing full suspension of entry include: Afghanistan, Myanmar (Burma), Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Countries with partial restrictions and limited entry include: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
Afghanistan and Venezuela have both had FIRST teams previously. They are defunct as of now, but if they were not, they would more or less be excluded from ever competing in the US even if they were the best team in the world.
We know this has happened before because now we have an entire movie about it (‘Rule Breakers’). That situation and need for intervention was caused by the current administrations policies the last time around. Here we are again and history is repeating itself. Any international team considering going on to worlds just has to hope their country doesn’t fall subject to the tantrums of the current administration and get added to the list.
22 Likes
Will you still consider it to be our “internal politics” when one of your team members gets detained at a point of entry on the basis of something they wrote on social media, and summarily shipped off to a prison in a different, unrelated country without due process or recourse?
11 Likes
I’m just telling you how people outside the U.S. see it. They don’t pay attention to the internal stuff if they can get a visa and find the money, they will go.
Edit: People in other countries have their own problems. Most of them are unaware of the internal workings of the U.S., or of ICE insanity etc.
17 Likes
I truly hope there are no problems, but you should be aware that our current “internal” problems can affect visitors. The president is not playing by the rules, so even having a visa and money today does not guarantee that you will be allowed to enter (or leave) the United States tomorrow.
The administration has set arbitrary and unattainable quotas for the number of people they want to remove from this country, and they don’t seem to care very much what laws they need to break to get there. And if you think the current ICE activity is “insanity” then just wait until the new budget is passed, which will QUADRUPLE the ICE enforcement budget.
I would never travel to another country while completely ignoring volatile “internal conditions” there. You would do well to understand what is really happening here before you commit your team to travel.
9 Likes
My friend, welcome to Türkiye!
To be honest I don’t usually suggest or recommend travelling to the U.S. to my teams. But they want to go. They have a different perspective than I do, since I was born and raised in the U.S. and they were not.
5 Likes
I know the problem looks big from an insider perspective but at least for us that actually travel a lot overseas, what is happening in the US is not even close of a concern that will affect decision making on to travel or not in a risk assessment view
11 Likes