Dave, The IAOC is aware of the situation with respect to visas for visitors from mainland China at this particular IETF meeting. Generally speaking, applicants are NOT refused visas, they just don't get a reply (or a visa) in time and they may never get a reply at all. We are not sure what happened this time, but we believe the "no reply" rate was much higher than normal and we will be working with various parties to try to make this easier in the future. It's worth noting that the visa situation for most countries in the world is by no means "static" so it's not just as simple as picking a list of venues with the most favorable visa situation, as this may have changed by the time we get round to having the meeting --- which, as you know, we try to schedule as far in advance as possible, in the 1 - 2 year range. As for being "dragged into politics," this is unfortunately not easy to avoid either. I probably don't need to mention the three^H^H^H^H^Hone China issue for example. Ole (IAOC Meetings subcommittee chair) Ole J. Jacobsen Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal Cisco Systems Tel: +1 408-527-8972 Mobile: +1 415-370-4628 E-mail: ole@xxxxxxxxx URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Dave CROCKER wrote: > > It's not a matter of being dragged into politics. (Or at least, it shouldn't > be.) > > It's essentially an engineering task of working to maximize the ability of > people to attend IETF meetings, by looking for venues where visa processing is > the least problematic. > > That does not mean "no visas" or anything else simplistic, except that border > controls do not impose undue and unpredictable barriers. > > d/ > -- _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf