On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 2:27 AM, Torsten Werner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list [email protected] http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
