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

[Vinayak Hegde <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 11:12 PM, Adam Roach <[e-mail]> 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