Thanks for everyone's thoughts on this!
In a globalized world--where competing head-to-head with someone from another country now only requires an internet connection--the concept of competition is no different than it has ever been, but the possibilities of exercising it are broadening.
To the point @yinstarrunner raised, a similar link can be had to chess players definitely. Competitive chess isn't new to the world, either in person (my own results in the cafeterias of my middle school days reminded me how awful I am at chess) or virtually (anyone else remember watching a telnet connection link up in the 1990s to join a chess game? Alas, my chess prowess on a computer lab terminal rivaled the same low-rung performance as my in-person endeavors) and no one has considered granting athlete visas to chess Grandmasters from across the globe, but perhaps one underlying point in the modern era is that an internet connection enables a chess player to compete anywhere, any time of day, at the highest levels of their abilities.
There is certainly a difference in competing physically on a court or fencing strip than across processors and graphics cards (or telnet chess rooms), and I interpreted the visa issuance not necessarily as the labeling over what is or isn't an athlete, but perhaps just the expansion of what it means to compete, with different countries themselves defining what it means to be a global athlete or, for that matter, a global competitor (a slippery slope when the broadest context of "competition" is taken into account, surely).
For those Pro Gamers who compete for a living, I think this is a great step, whichever visa or international bureaurcracy it's under.
A few years ago on a business trip to Korea, I was in Seoul during the World Cup season. Korea had advanced and with their player's enthusiasm, an entire city, an entire country was captivated. As I was taking the subway back to my hotel, the streets were filled with the red t-shirts, red flags. And the heat in the spectators eyes matched those I saw on the faces of the actual soccer players on every television I passed in a window or restaurant bar. Back in the hotel, alongside hearing people cheer three rooms away through the walls when Korea scored, I flipped to a broadcast competitive gaming channel, also featuring Korean pro gamers and a competitor country, and that same fire was no less intense in their eyes.
@HatKing--I think that's where the real victory is: visiting/ touring, bringing gamers together in person in a world where many may have only ever competed screen-to-screen, headset to headset. My own abilities as competitive gamer have never extended beyond Wii bowling and people related to me, but I'm a fan of those folks out there--real, competitive pro gamers that are creating one more channel by which connectivity shrinks all those past constraints of geographical limitations.
In that light, a real global gaming culture--interacting globally and competing globally and cheering globally--whether you're labeled an "athlete" or not---just somehow makes awesome sense.
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