Aphaia wrote:
On 10/11/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)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