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Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

arunraghavan.net

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Re: Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

#221

Post by Arrath »

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…

I'm a member of an organization that has moved to having each person who submits a paper for presentation sign an agreement stating that if they are selected to present at the conference, they will do so in person barring some act of god style event, on penalty of being barred from any further dealings with the organization.

This was brought about purely from folks submitting papers to get something published in the conference proceedings and then promptly fucking off into the sunset without ever showing up to present.

Re: Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

#222

Post by csomar »

arunarunarun wrote: post #135
csomar wrote: post #128

Here is something conferences can do: run the conference in a visa-easy country. These usually happen to be: 1. Cheap and 2. Welcoming because they need the conference economic activity. Of course this is unlikely to happen because the companies running these conferences are mostly based in the EU/USA/UK and would not bother with the inconvenience.

Author of the post here. Logistically, it's a _lot_ harder for a person/team to organise a conference in a location they don't live in. There's logistics of venue, payments to vendors if you're organising food/travel/hotels, you might have volunteers for registration, information, etc. and it's easiest to find those in your local community. And finances across borders are anothe huge wrinkle. It's not impossible, but…

I've been to a couple conferences in Hong Kong that selected HK exactly for this reason: Most countries don't need a visa. There is infrastructure in HK for these kind of things (and other things!). That being said, HK is not a cheap country by any stretch.

There are lots of other countries that balance both cost and convenience (ie: Turkey, UAE, Malaysia, Qatar)

Re: Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

#223

Post by hsjqllzlfkf »

Semaphor wrote: post #116
bombcar wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries don’t let you “change visa” without returning home. So if you’re in Germany on a tourist or student visa, and decide to get married, you have to fly home and apply for a marriage visa or whatever it is. Other countries let you basically “update the visa online” or at the embassy.

Pretty much this, some countries are allowed to change visas while in Germany, so you can get married in Denmark, which is an easy affair and doesn’t take much. Then you go to Germany, and the marriage is accepted there, and you can now change it to a spousal visa. Instead, she had to swear 3 times (twice in writing, once in person at the civil registry) that she’s not married either ritually, customary, or by law. A…

What's the significance of Denmark in this context? Why not just get married in Germany?

Re: Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

#224

Post by hsjqllzlfkf »

LastWeekendWas wrote: post #76
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The four designated State Sponsors of Terrorism are Cuba, Out of curiosity what's the latest terrorist attack sponsored by the Cuban state?

Severely embarrassing the US government? Or maybe just providing free high quality heath care to all its citizens? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba ; The World Bank acknowledges that Cuba's life expectancy at birth exceeds that of the United States

> Or maybe just providing free high quality heath care to all its citizens?

I've never been there, but my friend who's from Cuba says that hospitals, like all institutions in Cuba, more often than not lack the absolute basics.

Re: Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

#225

Post by cuteboy19 »

sofixa wrote: post #103
gruez wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should at least do a search before making a snarky comment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Sponsors_of_Terrorism_(U...

> Cuba was added to the list on March 1, 1982, on the basis that it has a history of supporting revolutionary movements in Spanish-speaking countries and Africa That's hilarious. It's after the CIA sponsored coups against democratically elected leftists, like infamously in Chile. So it's a problem when Cuba supports movements, but not when the US does it? Or was it just "fascism is better than anything even remotely…

It's a problem when America invades Cuba but not when Cuba invades Angola?

Whataboutism can work both ways

Re: Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

#226

Post by paganel »

filoleg wrote: post #218
paganel wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all intents and purposes you most probably had no problems with this test [1], which is another problem that does not get explicitly mentioned that often (the author of the post alludes to it when writing about "by post-colonial geopolitics") [1] https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/044/241/ski...

A pretty bad faith assumption that turned out to be factually incorrect. The OP elaborated in another comment that them and their friends that had issues with visas were from Russia. I am fairly certain that they are more likely than not to pass that "test" you referenced.

Glad to hear that that very-well known problem has been solved by now, thank you for making me learn after you had listened.

Re: Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

#227

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gumby wrote: post #120
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Visiting for 2-3 days // Long weekend "city breaks" are pretty common amongst the UK middle classes. Can you not go to a conference when in holiday? Isn't the difference who is paying - if you pay then it's a holiday, if work pays then it's business. Could work just give you a bonus to cover the amount at some later point? What's the rationale for not allowing business travel but allowing the same people to travel f…

> Long weekend "city breaks" are pretty common amongst the UK middle classes. Maybe to the Costa Del Sol, but not the lovely city of Melbourne. The overhead of flying from India to Europe makes a 2-3 day holiday pretty unlikely. The flights depart in the middle of the night, and then there is jet lag. > Can you not go to a conference when in holiday? That is immigration fraud. If you’re a white Australian coming to t…

> That is immigration fraud. If you’re a white Australian coming to the UK and doing that I seriously doubt there will be any negative consequence (source: an unofficial comment during an unfortunate visit to the Home Office). People in other situations may not fare as well.

Speaking of Australia, it isn’t clear to me at all if the e-visa Americans have to apply for to visit covers conferences or not. It is weird that Americans require a visa to Australia for a short visit (we don’t have a visa waiver agreement for some odd reason), but at least they make it easy, but if it involves a conference…well, I didn’t look into the e-visa terms very closely on my last visit, and very well could have violated visa terms.

Re: Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

#228

Post by seanmcdirmid »

indigo945 wrote: post #183
paganel wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would explain the "are you a terrorist?" forms I've heard they're asking people to fill in on their flights to the US.

That's actually precisely the reason. [1] It's not always easily possible to arrest somebody for having been or even being a terrorist abroad, but you can definitely arrest them for lying on their visa application papers. [1]: Well, probably. The Department of Homeland Security doesn't give an official reason: "The Department of Homeland Security did not explain the reason for this question, and it is not clear why a…

For the same reason that it is easier to arrest drug dealers, pimps, mafia dons, etc… on tax evasion charges than the more immediate crimes they committed.

Re: Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

#229

Post by sofixa »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #225
sofixa wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cuba was added to the list on March 1, 1982, on the basis that it has a history of supporting revolutionary movements in Spanish-speaking countries and Africa That's hilarious. It's after the CIA sponsored coups against democratically elected leftists, like infamously in Chile. So it's a problem when Cuba supports movements, but not when the US does it? Or was it just "fascism is better than anything even remotely…

It's a problem when America invades Cuba but not when Cuba invades Angola? Whataboutism can work both ways

Cuba didn't "invade" Angola, they sent troops to support one of the two factions in the Civil War.

Re: Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries

#230

Post by lynx23 »

yarpen_z wrote: post #42
lynx23 wrote: post #20

Or, even better, don't accept invites from U.S. based conferences, and you will never have any unexpected issues. Best not to cross their borders at all.

Great advice for any PhD student or researcher! Do you have any other valuable advice? How about just give up and quit your job? It would have the same effect.

You know, there is actually a world outside of the USA. Universities, research labs, companies of all kinds, and, surprise, people! This US-centric attitude is hilarious.
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