Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf10 - call for Location proposals
On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 2:27 AM, Torsten Werner
<mail.twerner@googlemail.com> wrote:
> There might be ways to ease getting an US visa. Last year we had the
> Opendocument workshop in Berlin. We could convince a politician (the
> german foreign minister) to become the patron of the workshop. The
> people from the ministry send the names of the participants to the
> embassies and told them that they are taking part in an important
> international conference. That helped getting visas and getting them
> in time. Maybe something like that is possible for Debconf, too?
That will definitely be useful. How much impossible to know.
Sadly, I can confirm Margarita's notes - unfortunately, current US
policy is that "employable, free to migrate" young people from
non-first-world countries are *very* often denied visas, specially if
they are not deemed to have "desirable jobs" in a large corp/company.
So even if the stats are low, they are high for the bracket that
Debconf attendees belong to.
Friends in latin america have had trouble trying to get a visitors
visa for a between-jobs holiday and after graduation holidays. The an
ex-head-of-pr/events for BMW Argentina (and Toyota before that) cannot
get a US Visa because she's finishing her thesis and has no payslip to
show. Note that this applies if you go to get the visa while you are
in the "at risk" group. US still issues long term visas (5 or 10y).
If the same rules were applied to EU citizens (ie: you cannot get a
visa while you are taking a sabbatical) it would be all over the
newspapers I suspect :-(
Current policies are unfortunate and very disruptive - I can
understand Patty's anger, we all share it, at least she can vote in
the US elections! :-) At this time, US visa policy is not helpful.
[ FWIW, I am spending 1/4 to 1/3 of my time in the US, while living in
NZ, due to OLPC meetings and workshops. This is all under an
Argentinian passport -- not the easiest task. Understading US visa
policy is part of what I need to get by... ]
I wish I was at Debconf now - hug Andrew McMillan on my behalf, and
enjoy Mar del Plata and my hometown BA!
cheers,
m
--
martin.langhoff@gmail.com
martin@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
- ask interesting questions
- don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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