Re: [73attendees] Is USA qualified for 2.3 of draft-palet-ietf-meeting-venue-selection-criteria?

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 1:24 AM, YAO <healthyao@gmail.com> wrote:
>   Meetings should not be held in countries where some attendees could
>   be disallowed entry

Is this thread still going? Heck, just hold it on a boat. Change the
IETF conference into an IETF cruise in international waters.

In all seriousness though, the State Department is a bureaucracy and
like any bureaucracy it likes things that file into neatly prepared
categories. When an attendee presents a letter of invitation from the
IETF of Fremont, CA 94538, I imagine the first thing the investigator
does is go to http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/list.html and put in "Internet
Engineering Task Force." Failing to find anything, he might try the
same at http://rct.doj.ca.gov/MyLicenseVerification/Search.aspx?facility=Y
or another site like it. Finding nothing there, he might possibly go
to http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=ai1epe.1.1 and
search for IETF since the logo on the invitation letter claims to be a
registered trademark. This will lead him to something called the "IETF
Trust" of Reston Virginia. So, he may got to
http://www.scc.virginia.gov/clk/bussrch.aspx but that won't find
anything IETF. Since the meeting is held in Minnesota, he may try
http://www.sos.state.mn.us/home/index.asp?page=792 as well, but he
still won't find anything.

Next the investigator may pick up the phone, call Wanda Lo and ask
what the heck this IETF thing is, but by then you've raised three Red
Flags: an organization that doesn't appear to legally exist at the
given address, has a trademarked registered on the other side of the
country to an entity that also doesn't appear to exist and is
allegedly holding a conference in still another part of the country
where it doesn't seem to legally exist. To an investigator who doesn't
know "Internet Engineering Task Force" from "George Walker Elementary
School Little League," that means your application goes into the
"we'll get back to you" queue.

I could be dead wrong. I've never worked in immigration and I don't
personally know anyone who has. But that's my SWAG.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com  bill@herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
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