Hi all
I have attended ten IETF meetings since IETF 87 including Dallas 92 and Honolulu 91. I am an atheist living in Norway, who happens to have an Iranian passport (and haven't been to Iran in the last 7 years). Based on the current so-called Muslim ban, despite having planned to attend the IETF in Chicago and having applied for the visa, already being interviewed at the US embassy in Oslo, going through the "administrative processing" (security background checks), all prior to Trump's inauguration, I now won't be able to make it to the meeting in Chicago.
While it might already be too late for this specific meeting in Chicago, I believe as a general principle, IETF should avoid holding meetings in the states that have introduced blanket visa bans on various nationalities (or minorities) indiscriminately, specially if there is an interest within the IETF to have a better participation from such under-represented countries (e.g., Middle East or Africa). It is also important to highlight that the current blanket ban does not only affect the people who directly come from these 7 countries in the Middle East and Africa, but also hundreds of university researchers and industry employees in Europe, Australia, Canada, and East Asia (who happen to posses the passports of these banned countries) who attend various academic conferences, and/or IETF meetings in the US from time to time.
See you all in beautiful Prague,
Cheers,
Naeem
Naeem Khademi
Postdoctorate Researcher
Department of Informatics
University of Oslo, Norway
On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 11:02 AM, Randy Bush <randy@xxxxxxx> wrote:
let me spin jari's point a bit differently.
if the outrageous actions out of washington are less than one a week, i
for one will be surprised. and i strongly encourage protest, funding
the aclu, etc etc. [ and i have been pushing back against stateside
meetings for a looooong time ]
but there will soon be violations of rights and sanity which are not so
obvious to the general public, but will be in the internet community's
domain. the internet community will need all the energy and resources
we can muster to deal with those directly on our turf.
expect years of outrageous fascist hateful acts and plan your resource
expenditures accordingly.
randy