If he got pushed out of the league for being gay, he’d lose his closed work visa sponsor and may not be able to stay in Canada. Even if he was willing to work at Walmart, he wouldn’t have been able to.
Ilya’s a multimillionaire, though? He could easily buy his citizenship (Canada, the USA, anywhere he wanted really.) There is really no danger of him being forced to return to Russia even if the worst happened and he couldn’t play hockey anymore and had no job. He’d still be rich af. Rich af people can (and do) live wherever they please. Most rich people have multiple passports (citizenships) and travel on whichever is most convenient.
Investment visas don’t cost more than a couple million dollars anywhere. Countries welcome rich people with open arms. They practically beg them to come and stay.
Hell, even if Ilya wasn’t rich, Canada wouldn’t deport him back to Russia if his work visa ran out. Or if the Russian government requested his extradition Canada wouldn’t comply. Canada has a good track record of accepting/welcoming high profile Soviet/Russian political refugees.
Ilya would only ‘have’ to go back to Russia if he went of his own free will.. or if he was kidnapped by the Russian mafia or something.
Yes. All this is reasonable as well.
Well then, why didn’t he do any of this stuff??!!
In this universe, we were only presented with two pathways of staying safe from Russia: work visa or marriage.
If what you said is true, why did he spend the entirety of Heated Rivalry being worried about Russia then? Even if he still had to physically return there regularly, he could have started the process of obtaining citizenship of another country. He played in Boston for NINE years. I mean, America wouldn’t just extradite a high profile athlete to Russia for being gay either…..
More importantly, SHANE’s understanding of why Russia wasn’t safe for Ilya came from Ilya. Ilya told him over and over why Russia wasn’t safe for him and that was why they couldn’t be together (Tampa, cottage). It’s not like Ilya said, “yes, Russia is unsafe for queer people, but since I’m famous and rich af, I’d be completely fine because I can just get citizenship anywhere I want”, or “Russia is unsafe for queer people but I’d be fine because it’d look terrible for America or Canada to extradite me there for being bisexual”.
The problem isn’t whether or not it’s unreasonable for Ilya to see Russia as unsafe. It’s that he spent a long time being afraid, and then stopped caring about it when circumstances are exactly the same. Even if that’s the case and he carefully reevaluates things and determines that he overestimated the risks and he’s fine now, that’s fine. But that didn’t happen either. Even if that happened, he still didn’t tell anyone about it and people can’t read minds. Even readers wouldn’t be able to when he didn’t even think it.
Also, even in real life, if a queer person from an oppressive country tells me that they don’t feel safe, I’d believe them.
