Re: [Mtgvenue] visa situation... worsens?

Here is some hard data. An annual African Development Conference in
Southern California that normally has a 40% visa rejection rate among
those trying to attend who are from Africa this year had a 100% visa
rejection rate.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/african-development-summit-univerrsity-southern-california-cancelled-african-delegates-denied-us-a7637696.html

Thanks,
Donald
===============================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   +1-508-333-2270 (cell)
 155 Beaver Street, Milford, MA 01757 USA
 d3e3e3@gmail.com

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 3:43 PM, Vinayak Hegde <vinayakh@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 11:12 PM, Adam Roach <adam@nostrum.com> wrote:
>> The W3C WebPayments WG is presently holding a two-day face-to-face interim
>> meeting in Chicago, with approximately 40 people in attendance. According to
>> the responsible W3C staff member, we had one person who was interested in
>> attending but could not due to visa issues; however, in that specific case,
>> the problem in obtaining a visa was due solely to timing rather than any
>> recent US policy changes (i.e., the person would have had exactly the same
>> problem one year ago).
>>
>> Sample size of 40 is admittedly small; but based on this data set, the
>> number of participants affected by the recent policy US visa changes
>> resolves to 0%. The number of people impacted by chronic, ongoing US visa
>> process is 1 in ~40.
>
> Not wanting to nitpick but it might be that a majority of participants
> in that group might be from the US/EU and not from Latam/Asia/Africa.
> It might be more useful if the split is known. Also it is possibly
> that the people in the latter category already had visas.
>
> There a couple more points I would like to elucidate
> 1. You also do not want to be treated like a criminal when you travel
> (thanks to colour of your skin or funny sounding last names). Being
> treated with dignity is important. The current US administration
> policies (no laptops/electronics on board some airlines - except
> cellphones or asking for social media profiles at the immigration
> counter) are discriminatory.
>
> 2. Many people will also not bother applying if the hassle is a lot.
> In many places it costs upward of ~$250 to apply for the visa and file
> the documentation. I had posted about cost earlier to mtgvenue (the
> message is about BA but for US the costs are similar). You forfeit the
> fee if you don't get a visa. If you don't have a good chance of
> getting it, you rather not apply.
> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/mtgvenue/current/msg00083.html
>
> -- Vinayak
>
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