Aphaia wrote:
On 10/11/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I did not hear of visa problems at Frankfurt, but it affected many people who would have liked to attend in Boston. AFAIK, unfortunately and ironically, the only people that were kept from Taipei because of visa issues were the Egyptians.
For the record, visa arrangement for Egyptians were perfect: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of R.O.C. promised those Egyptians would be able to get visas on port. Unfortunately it was settled after the Egyptians had given up to attend and had filled their schedule with other local concerns. So ultimately there was no critical visa issue in Taipei. No registered attendees rejected by the government of the hosting place. It was not the Taipei case.
Thank you for clarifying this.
I expect that visa issues will continue to be a factor in choosing American hosts at least until after they have had a change of government.
As for accessibility, visa issue was a big concern of us the jury, particularly people who were involved into the 2006 conference organization in Boston. And for enforcing free knowledge in a global level, I personally this visa issue concern could be much more weighed, even more than the geographical rotation (as announced, even if we got rid of this category, the final result wouldn't be altered). Immigration policy is also a political concern, but it directly affects the conference and hinders our community members to share the knowledge with us the rest.
The rotation is still only one factor, and the United States is not the only country in the Americas.
I agree about the importance of the visa issue. Taiwan has done a good job of working around its political isolation. Egypt knows the value of tourism. As an organisation we have advanced much from the work of American wikipedians. But with such a self-contradictory assortment of American laws it is mostly their own citizens that are poorly served by government.
Ec