Not all visits are the same, and that’s not really a good comparison. There’s a huge difference between visiting as a tourist temporarily for the world cup (a high profile event with extensive news coverage where any refusal is going to attract attention and be very internationally newsworthy) and the relatively routine process of actually immigrating for long-term work (dirty immigrants taking our jobs! /s) which is exactly what they are fighting against, whether any of us agree with that or not.

The latter is much, much riskier in today’s political climate. It shouldn’t be. But it is.