Re: [102attendees] [103attendees] Visa problems - need a different invitation letter

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Everyone, especially everyone who is giving advice to others
about whether a tourist visa works and anyone inclined to take
such advice without doing their own evaluation...

Please read George's note carefully.  Please read Andrew
Sullivan's explanation on the IETF list of why IAOC could not
give more specific guidance and should not try.   And read my
earlier comments, and those of others, about decisions at the
borders.  

I have been to Thailand several times and have found their
border police/ immigration officers considerably more courteous
and reasonable than those of several countries where the IETF
has met without a big fuss.  YMMV depending on a whole series of
factors, possibly including bad luck.

Note that there has been advice on this thread that I believe to
be seriously bad, e.g., that a business visa is not needed if
one's company does not have offices in Thailand.  If the company
does and you might be stopping by those offices, a business visa
would probably be good insurance against time-consuming and
unpleasant misunderstandings.  Whether it or was required could
be something you might find out only after the fact (or, if you
get one, not at all).  But, if you come in with a tourist visa
and then give a talk to your company's customers or try to sell
products, "my company doesn't have offices there" would probably
provide little help even if those activities are very much
incidental to IETF attendance.  

That actually points to another problem: most countries will
tolerate some small percentage of business activity if you are
on a tourist visa and its is clear that your primary purpose is
tourism.  However, almost no country will give a clear answer to
questions about the maximum percentage and how they measure it,
nor a clear answer as to whether spending a week in meeting
rooms gets the same rating for "clearly tourism" as, e.g., lying
on a beach soaking up the local sunshine.  So, whether that
information is of any use at all depends on your risk aversion
(see below).

Individual circumstances will also differ for reasons not
mentioned here.  Let me try an example that is certainly not
limited to Thailand: If the IETF schedule included something
like bits-and-bytes, and I worked for a company that was
planning to exhibit and discuss a product there, I'd be afraid
to show up at the meeting on a tourist visa rather than a
business one.  I'd have similar concerns if my company were a
meeting sponsor, an executive of the company were planning to
give a talk, and that talk might sound like a product pitch.
The odds of my getting into trouble in most countries, most
days, if I were not personally involved in those types of
activities are fairly low.  But consider the loss function: if I
did get into trouble, or if my status were questioned beyond a
question or two at the airport, the odds of my being really
unhappy  are astronomical.  

As another example of an individual situation, there are
countries I'd feel comfortable entering on a tourist visa while
bringing a standard commercial tablet or laptop but a lot less
comfortable while carrying a few circuit boards and a Raspberry
Pi kit or two... especially so if I didn't speak the local
language well enough to explain what the latter were and what I
intended to do with them.  We think of those sorts of things as
customs issues, but they can be visa status issues as well.  

That is the one bit of advice I would give and that I've hinted
about before: if, after looking at assorted web sites and trying
to understand the conflicting advice, you find yourself confused
and anxious about what category you should be in, go for a
business visa.  I have never heard of anyone being put in jail
for arriving on a business visa and then going to a meeting that
didn't really require it or doing a little tourist stuff.
People do go to jail, or get unceremoniously ejected, for
representing themselves as tourists only to have the country
decide they are something else.  

Actually a second bit, following up one of George's comments: if
you are on record as criticizing the royal family, or even the
morals, religion or eating habits of a country's leadership,
think carefully about how they deal with that sort of that sort
of dissent, and whether you want to go there at all, independent
of visa category.  Again, there is little in that advice that is
specific to Thailand.

If you are inclined to take either of those bits of advice,
remember what you paid for them and that I make no claim to
expertise about any situation not identical to my own.

But let's not drag this discussion out further: it appears to me
to be adding almost no signal to the noise.  YMMD about that to;
if it does, I suppose you should go for it.

best,
   john


--On Thursday, September 6, 2018 16:20 +1000 George Michaelson
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> A friend got permission to travel to the US for a health
> related conference, as an Iranian, resident in Australia, and
> working in a non-nuclear field. She even got to the door of
> the conference and the registration desk before somebody
> realised the university housed a nuclear reactor, and
> therefore by definition she should have been denied entry for
> this  specific meeting. She wound up being personally directed
> off campus, escorted back to LAX, and sat with until outside
> the US border until she could be flown home, hugely
> embarrassing for her personally, and the conference, who
> risked defaulting on US embargo rules which are otherwise
> strictly enforced.
> 
> The moral of the story, (because this is on topic) is that you
> should *never* trust a website associated with a conference or
> meeting to correctly describe your personal immigration
> status, right of entry, visa obligations. They cannot know
> everything about you.
> 
> Have you ever insulted the Thai royal family in print or
> online? You are strongly advised not to go to Thailand as
> imprisonment may offend (you). Is this discussed on the visa
> page?
> 
> Folks, the IETF information is at best advisory: They cannot
> guarantee you will get entry, even if you wave the letter of
> invitation. "it depends"
>...