On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 03:59:01PM -0400, Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote: > On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 08:41:54PM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote: > > In the case of those people denied visas, were they sponsored? Did they > > have financial losses and was it possible to compensate them? > I don't think DebConf10 sponsored those fees in that situation - but I > really don't remember. However, the economics of Portland are different > enough from those of NYC, and 2013-2014 different enough from 2008-2010, > that any decision on how to handle visa fees for their bid will not depend > on what DC10 did. As for what they decide... I'm not on the Portland bid > team and will not speak for them. :) I would not regard that as a "Portland" decision. The funds for any visa sponsorship should come from the DebConf coffers, and use of money for this purpose should be agreed with the DebConf team as a whole - possibly even as a requirement of the Committee's acceptance of the Portland bid. My personal view is that visa application fees are every bit as reasonable a use of the travel sponsorship budget as plane tickets, and should be given equal standing wrt reimbursement requests. I would also say that in the event a visa application is rejected, if the applicant was approved for travel sponsorship we should reimburse them for the application fee even though they're unable to attend, because it's much easier for DebConf to absorb the cost in this case than for the individual attendee to do so and we don't want people to feel deterred from applying for visas because they're worried about out-of-pocket costs if they're rejected. I would not make an exception to cover rejected visa application fees for anyone we had not agreed to cover travel sponsorship for. I also think the $14 ESTA processing fee for citizens of visa waiver countries should not be reimbursed. The amount would be de minimis for those affected (comparable to the price of a lunch at the airport), but if we reimbursed the fee for everyone it could cost us the equivalent of 1 or 2 fully-sponsored attendees from Central America, and that doesn't seem like a sensible trade-off to me. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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