Olympic Champ: Queen Made Me a Knight, Trump Made Me an Alien

Mo Farah says he has 'to tell my children that Daddy might not be able to come home'
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jan 29, 2017 8:53 AM CST
Olympic Champ: Queen Made Me a Knight, Trump Made Me an Alien
In this file photo dated Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016, Britain's Mo Farah poses with his gold medals after winning the men's 5000-meter event, during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.   (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, FILE)

Four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah says President Trump's immigration policy "seems to have made me an alien" and fears he may not be able to return to his US home, reports the AP. Farah is a British citizen who was born in Somalia, one of seven predominantly Muslim nations subject to the executive order that temporarily bans entry to the United States. Farah currently is training in Ethiopia, but the BBC notes that his family has lived in Portland, Ore., for six years. "It's deeply troubling," the 33-year-old Farah wrote on his Facebook page, "that I will have to tell my children that Daddy might not be able to come home—to explain why the President has introduced a policy that comes from a place of ignorance and prejudice." Farah and his reps are trying to establish whether the fact he was born in Somalia will now present a problem for him when he wishes to return to the United States. Farah does not have dual nationality or hold a Somalian passport.

Farah moved to Britain from Somalia at the age of 8 and is now regarded as one of the greatest-ever athletes in British sport after winning the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters at both the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games and at the 2013 and '15 world championships. He also won the 5,000 meters gold at the 2011 world championships and was recently given a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II. "On 1st January this year, Her Majesty The Queen made me a Knight of the Realm. On 27th January, President Donald Trump seems to have made me an alien," Farah said in his statement. "I am a British citizen who has lived in America for the past six years—working hard, contributing to society, paying my taxes and bringing up our four children in the place they now call home. Now, me and many others like me are being told that we may not be welcome." (More Mo Farah stories.)

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