There is actually some positive news on the US Visa front :
http://www.unitedstatesvisas.gov/visanews/index.html
President Bush Announces Visa Waiver Program Expansion - VWP travel
begins November 17
On October 17, President Bush announced the imminent expansion of the
Visa Waiver Program (VWP) to include the Czech Republic, Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, the Republic of Korea and the Slovak
Republic. However, the United States must still complete certain
internal steps required by statute before we can complete VWP
expansion. Nationals of these seven countries continue to require
visas to travel to the United States during that period. Nationals of
the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, the Republic
of Korea and the Slovak Republic will be able to travel without
obtaining a visa for tourist and business travel of 90 days or less
beginning November 17 provided they possess a biometric passport and
register on-line through the Electronic System for Travel
Authorization (ESTA). For the full text of the President's statement
see the Press Release.
Regards
Marshall
On Nov 21, 2008, at 2:10 AM, Raj Yaralagadda wrote:
Hi
Hold the meeting In Singapore Most of the Countries do not need
Visa, Visa on Arrival, 15 Days to 3 months for EU, US, Japanese,
and Canadian citizens will get on Arrival.
I'm Singaporean i don't need visa to travel to most of the places.
---------------------
Sincerely
Raj
T: +65 8229 0283
E: Raj6465@xxxxxxxxx
From: Nicholas Weaver <nweaver@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Scott Brim <sbrim@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: 73attendees@xxxxxxxx; Nicholas Weaver
<nweaver@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; ietf@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 3:40:58 AM
Subject: Re: [73attendees] Is USA qualified for 2.3ofdraft-palet-
ietf-meeting-venue-selection-criteria?
On Nov 18, 2008, at 10:53 AM, Scott Brim wrote:
> Excerpts from Randy Bush on Tue, Nov 18, 2008 10:39:57AM -0600:
>> qdang@xxxxxxxx wrote:
>>> I believe our US government would like to grant visas to as many
>>> people as they can. However, if anyone wants to attend a meeting
in
>>> the US is granted a visa to come here, then I can imagine there
will
>>> be 100 million visa applications for the IETF meeting in CA next
year
>>> alone.
>>
>> thank you for demonstrating so clearly the jingoistic prejudice
at the
>> us government level that should preclude ietf being held in the
united
>> states.
>
> How would you solve the problem? Let 100 million people in on false
> pretenses? I'm not going to defend the behavior of the US
government,
> but I want you to admit that US immigration has a difficult problem.
> Slinging labels around doesn't help.
Remember, the IETF is NOT special. There are tens of thousands of
conferences, and they are all pretty much need-to-be-treated equal.
If the US gave effectively carte blanch to conference attendees, you
would have no immigration controls, period, as this would be a big
enough loophole to fly an A380 through.
The Visa issue in the US is serious, but how many people are really
affected by this?
We need hard data, because the notion of simply "not holding IETF
meetings in a terrorist country" is not effective.
And if you want to do Visa issues as a criteria, you can strongly
argue that all IETF meeting SHOULD be in a country where a visa is
not required for travel for EU, US, Japanese, and Canadian citizens.
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