Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

Post by reshlo » Mon, Aug 21, 2023, 11:22 AM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #48

vient wrote: post #16

There is also a specific subset of this problem named "USA conferences on themes from Technology Alert List" with common examples being information security conferences like DEFCON or BlackHat. Just mentioning such conference during visa application may already give you headache, and usually you work in this field if you go to such conference - working in critical field automatically gets you an administrative proces…

Sounds as if the current Cold War II situation keeps on escalating, people from a growing number of countries straight up won't be able to get visas for those conferences anymore.

Post by ekianjo » Mon, Aug 21, 2023, 11:24 AM UTC

i_no_can_eat wrote: post #25

There is another side to this. Whenever I have organized conferences, I end up receiving lots of requests for invitation letters, typically from researchers in India, for Visa purposes. I absolutely understand this, and I have always done my best to accommodate these requests. But this is time-consuming, and it is very annoying when those researchers (who are sometimes also scheduled to speak) never show up, and neve…

Post by dale_glass » Mon, Aug 21, 2023, 11:26 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #40

dale_glass wrote: post #12

Yup. I was once invited to an US conference that was going to happen two weeks from my invitation. Even getting an appointment with the embassy within that timeline was impossible. Later I went for a different reason and if I recall the time to actually getting a visa was around 2 months.

Honestly, unless it's some critical customer/business thing (which I have had), anyone who wants me to speak at an international conference with two weeks notice is going to get told "My schedule is packed."

Post by FirmwareBurner » Mon, Aug 21, 2023, 11:28 AM UTC

resolutebat wrote: post #51

ggm wrote: post #17

If you're an American university with a teaching or research Reactor, make sure your conference organisers know attendees from China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria may be required not to be within a statutory minimum distance. It's hugely confronting and embarrassing for invited speakers, paper authors to arrive and then get excluded and escorted off campus.

The four designated State Sponsors of Terrorism are Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Iran, and Syria, and due to OFAC sanctions you'll need to be very careful if you plan on inviting any of these to the US. However, China and Venezuela are not on this particular shit list. https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism/

Post by avs733 » Mon, Aug 21, 2023, 11:29 AM UTC

duxup wrote: post #55

ggm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't find any documentation. Was an iranian engineer whose paper was accepted and they were then escorted off campus. Maybe it was some point of confusion or during heightened tensions US-Iran because I can't find any confirming documents online. The most likely situation is an over cautious interpretation of https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-inf...

I’ve never heard of this happening the way you describe it. US Universities often have many international students. Public universities often are large open public spaces. It seems highly unlikely it would happen just because of the person’s country of origin… all by itself.