Re: If Muslims are blocked by the U.S., should the IETF respond?

[Naeem Khademi <[e-mail]>]

Hi all

I have attended ten IETF meetings since IETF 87 including Dallas 92 and
Honolulu 91. I am an atheist living in Norway, who happens to have an
Iranian passport (and haven't been to Iran in the last 7 years). Based on
the current so-called Muslim ban, despite having planned to attend the IETF
in Chicago and having applied for the visa, already being interviewed at
the US embassy in Oslo, going through the "administrative processing"
(security background checks), all prior to Trump's inauguration, I now
won't be able to make it to the meeting in Chicago.

While it might already be too late for this specific meeting in Chicago, I
believe as a general principle, IETF should avoid holding meetings in the
states that have introduced blanket visa bans on various nationalities (or
minorities) indiscriminately, specially if there is an interest within the
IETF to have a better participation from such under-represented countries
(e.g., Middle East or Africa). It is also important to highlight that the
current blanket ban does not only affect the people who directly come from
these 7 countries in the Middle East and Africa, but also hundreds of
university researchers and industry employees in Europe, Australia, Canada,
and East Asia (who happen to posses the passports of these banned
countries) who attend various academic conferences, and/or IETF meetings in
the US from time to time.

See you all in beautiful Prague,

Cheers,
Naeem

Naeem Khademi
Postdoctorate Researcher
Department of Informatics
University of Oslo, Norway
http://heim.ifi.uio.no/naeemk/

On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 11:02 AM, Randy Bush <[e-mail]> wrote:

> let me spin jari's point a bit differently.
>
> if the outrageous actions out of washington are less than one a week, i
> for one will be surprised.  and i strongly encourage protest, funding
> the aclu, etc etc.  [ and i have been pushing back against stateside
> meetings for a looooong time ]
>
> but there will soon be violations of rights and sanity which are not so
> obvious to the general public, but will be in the internet community's
> domain.  the internet community will need all the energy and resources
> we can muster to deal with those directly on our turf.
>
> expect years of outrageous fascist hateful acts and plan your resource
> expenditures accordingly.
>
> randy
>
>