Players to benefit from US immigration change

Baltimore Oriole Miguel Tejada is tagged out by Boston Red Sox catcher Doug Mirabelli in a game at Fenway Park in Boston on Sept. 30. Tejada and other foreign athletes will benefit from a US immigration law change that will treat them as internationally recognized athletes. PHOTO: AP

Whether or not they're potential superstars like Miguel Tejada or Sammy Sosa, all foreigners signed to play in the US' minor baseball leagues will soon be treated as internationally recognized athletes by US immigration law.

Before it adjourned for the year, Congress passed legislation reclassifying minor leaguers' visa status from temporary seasonal workers to internationally recognized athletes -- like major leaguers.

The law will allow Major League Baseball (MLB) and other sports to bring in an unlimited number of foreign ballplayers without running afoul of a legal limit.

US President George W. Bush is expected to sign the bill.

Although the bill will help US professional basketball, ice hockey and ice skating, its main beneficiary is baseball because of the sport's vast minor league system and reliance on players from Latin America and other parts of the world.

The US currently allows minor league athletes into the country with the same kind of visas as other seasonal temporary workers. The agency caps these at 66,000 a year, and since 2004 the cap has been reached each year.

Ed Burns, MLB's vice president for baseball operations, said the cap prevented teams from bringing in an estimated 350 players in 2004 and last year.

Some players were put on the inactive list while they tried to get visas the next year. Others were placed in the lowest-level rookie leagues in Venezuela or the Dominican Republic.

Players in the latter category were faced with the prospect of seeing their careers stalled, Burns said.

"Players who were jammed with the H-2B visa cap might have had to have spent an extra year at one of those Latin American minor leagues, when their skill level and development ought to have dictated that they played in a higher classification," he said.

Burns said that could have happened to someone like Sosa, a late bloomer who became one of MLB's most prolific home run hitters, had the cap been in place when he signed with the Texas Rangers in 1985.

The Rangers might have been reluctant to use a visa spot to promote the Dominican-born Sosa early in his career had such visas been in short supply back then, he said.

But Burns said Sosa's talent eventually would have landed him in the major leagues.

Some teams, like the Milwaukee Brewers, do not have teams in Latin America.

So the Brewers, when faced with the cap, have had to rent out roster space from other teams there, said Gord Ash, Milwaukee's assistant general manager.