It's a real risk: http://boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html
Peter was convicted and spent time in jail, and until recently was not eligible for reentry to the US. His crime? When a border patrol officer started searching his car without asking permission or even saying why, he asked why, and was not properly submissive when the officer demanded it of him. Don't tell me there's nobody in the IETF who would behave similarly in the similar circumstances. This sort of thing happens to people of color fairly frequently in the U.S.; the only thing unusual about Peter Watts' case was that he is white and Canadian. We have special prisons in the U.S. for non-citizens who have run afoul of U.S. immigration.
The risk of being arrested for carrying Ritalin, asthma medicine or Adderall into Japan is also real, and there have been arrests in the past five years.
On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 12:58 PM, Margaret Cullen <margaretw42@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On May 25, 2016, at 12:53 PM, Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 25 May 2016, Melinda Shore wrote:
>
>> Perhaps we should regard this as an opportunity to talk about which forms of bigotry we'll accommodate and which we won't.
>
> We're accomodating bigotry all the time.
>
> Compare:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Singapore
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_United_States#Visa_exemption
>
> Now tell me how many more participants enjoy a lot less hassle in order to attend Singapore compared to attending a meeting in USA? Notice also that this isn't theoretical or low risk hassle, this is actual hassle of having to go through a visa application process with all that means.
I went through a visa application process to attend the meeting in China, and there was no point in that process where I was concerned that I might be imprisoned for my race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or gender _expression_…
Is that a real risk for IETF attendees who are applying for visas to attend U.S. meetings? If so, in what way? Or are you talking about annoying paperwork?
Margaret