Missing Zimbabwe athletes posing a mystery in Britain

LONDON -- A group of high-profile soccer players from Zimbabwe has caused a media frenzy here and in Zimbabwe by failing to return home last week after a match in northern England.

The eight members of the CAPS United and Highlanders soccer teams did not join their teammates on the return flight from London's Heathrow airport Tuesday, generating speculation that they, like thousands of Zimbabweans before them, left behind their turbulent home country to make a life for themselves here.

Zimbabwe native Ezra Sibanda, who helped promote the sporting event, said that he spoke to the players and that all fear they may face sanctions and other reprisals if they return to Zimbabwe. Sibanda interviewed three of the players on his London-based radio show Afro Sounds FM, and said some players were thinking about applying to work here.

''If you go to Zimbabwe and ask anyone, 9 out of 10 people would say, if given the chance, they would move to England," Sibanda said. ''The players say, 'Why waste it -- why not take advantage of it?' "

There is still some dispute about whether the players have defected. Officials with ZimEvents, the Birmingham-based company that planned the match, said that while they had not been in contact with the players, they were on six-month visas and therefore in Britain legally for now. Zimbabwean media have reported that a special government commission is looking into the matter.

Defection by athletes is nothing new. But the nature of sports defections in Britain is taking on a form quite different from the often-romantic one attached to athletes who defected during the Cold War.

In the past few years, cricket players from Sri Lanka and India, golfers from Nigeria, and athletes of all sorts from Sierra Leone have come to Britain to play in games, and then disappeared before competition began. Often these players give up a high profile in their countries to work in menial jobs here, a sign of the pull Britain has on people from around the world.

The latest incident garnered additional attention because it occurred nearly three months after the subway bombings, and as British politicians are reassessing diversity and the ability of people from different cultures and countries to seek refuge and new lives here.

Immigration -- legal and illegal -- has been booming in Britain over the past two decades. About 1 in 4 people living in London was born in another country, and legal immigration alone has brought more than a million people to Britain over a decade, according to a recent report by the left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research.

''It is certainly true that the UK over the last couple of years has become a major destination country," said Eric Neumayer, an associate professor at the London School of Economics who recently presented a paper showing that the UK has more lenient visa requirements than any other country, which could lead to more visitors overstaying their visas. ''The existing communities of immigrants inevitably mean they attract more new immigration," he said.

Steven Vertovec, director of the Center on Migration, Policy, and Society at the University of Oxford, said, ''The UK has stuck its neck out and said, we think migrants are good for the economy, both high-skilled and low-skilled."

But the ability of asylum seekers and other immigrants to move to Britain, and in some cases disappear, has put members of the Conservative Party on edge.

''It is vital, especially at this time of heightened terrorism, that Britain has control of her borders and knows exactly who is coming in and out of the country," said Patrick Mercer, the Conservatives's homeland security spokesman. ''Yet under Labor, just one-third of our main points of entry are manned 24 hours a day and there are now at least 250,000 failed asylum seekers in this country whose whereabouts we do not know."

If they do seek asylum, the Zimbabwean soccer players would face hurdles because they didn't apply as soon as they set foot on British soil. This means that if they overstay their six-month visas, they will become like the hundreds of thousands of other undocumented migrants who have entered the country legally and then did not leave when their visas expire.

For foreigners like the soccer players, it can be difficult to know how to proceed.

Ake Nigbo, 28, an immigrant from the Ivory Coast, came to Britain two years ago to study chemistry and escape his war-torn country. Nigbo, who is seeking asylum, lives in the Stockwell neighborhood in south London, where Brazilian immigrant Jean Charles de Menezes was fatally shot by police officers who errantly believed he was a terrorist suspect.

Nigbo thinks there are too many immigrants in London, but knows that many, like his friends and family from the Ivory Coast, feel that Britain is one of the few places they will be safe.

''What we need is to stay in our own country," he said. ''But we come to England because in our own country, we couldn't have peace."