As you mentioned American and Canadian visa has a longer duration, so visa renewal is something you need to worry about only once in 10 years or so.
For Europe, I think (not sure) if you travel there frequently, you are eligible for a longer-duration multiple-entry visa [1] (the linked website is NOT an official government website). I know somebody with such a type of visa.
For the US you sometimes might get a visa that's valid only for a year, and in some extreme cases I've seen people receive visas for 30 days surrounding a specific event they were traveling for .
I had a 5-year F1 visa for what would normally be a 2-year graduate course.
I was under the impression that 5 years was the norm, considering a lot of undergrad courses (in engineering especially) take about that long to complete.
Grad schools too can take that long if you're aiming for a PhD.
(Although, when you graduate your F1 expires even if there's still time left on it; so you can't continue staying in the US after graduating without obtaining an OPT, or a different type of visa, PR or whatever).
Funnily enough those instances I described are based on Israelis as well.
From what I gather it mostly depends on how the person reviewing your application thinks it's likely you might break your visa terms (stay longer than you should, work when you're not allowed to).
Usually happens for younger people or people involved with problematic industries (military etc)
Regarding the US, as an European the ESTA is tied to the passport, so when it expires (or you lose it and have to renew it), you have to redo it. So yeah, usually it's ~10 years.
EDIT: sorry for the misinformation, ESTA expires after 2 years OR when the passport expires [0]
It's not technically a visa, but you must have an ESTA which is like a pre-approval for a visa and is required for all flights to USA from participating countries. Then on arrival it's up to the border patrol to determine you're validity for entry and issue you with a 90 day "visa".
From your link:
> Travelers must have a valid Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) approval prior to travel and meet all requirements explained below. If you prefer to have a visa in your passport, you may still apply for a visitor (B) visa.
So it's not as complex as the visa process and can be all done online. The ESTA lasts for 2 years (as far as I can remember).
The ESTA is not a visa and when using the Visa Waiver Program you do not have a visa. The Visa Waiver Program existed before ESTA.
Think of ESTA as an opportunity to search for you in terrorist & crime databases ahead of time, as doing it at the time of the entry is logistically hard.
Not sure about Bulgaria and Cyprus, but in Romania's case having a visa refusal rate of above 3%
From my circle of friends it seems like random chance, and because there is no reason given for the refusal one can only speculate. When I got my B-1/B-2 visa, my interview was very quick (I'd even dare to say closer to 1 minute). Whereas I have a couple of friends that applied for a travel visa and were rejected after being "interrogated" more heavily. When it comes to travel visas, I would assume they would mostly filter for potential illegal immigration, but all those I know that got rejected were pretty well "rooted" in the country.
There might just be the fact that getting an invitation letter from a company is considerably more important than receiving one from anyone else.
Side note: EU is planning to retaliate, and just as US is requiring ESTA from EU citizens traveling to US, in 2024 EU will start to require a similar application caller ETIAS, from US citizens traveling to EU.
People on twitter seems to think this is the -end- of American tourism for Europe, funny how just bringing the same standards suddenly makes us a no-visiting place.
It's a power game. Presumably less Americans visit places that require visas since there are enough places that don't. So Americans may not want to go to Europe as much. Currently plenty of European tourists go to America, so maybe that doesn't bother them as much.
Pick a third world country like Jamaica. Americans can go there visa free, and Jamaica wants Americans to continue to come, so it stays visa free. However Jamaicans require Visas to go to the US, because the US had decided that it doesn't need to encourage Jamaicans to come to the US, enough already do.
Presumably it also means some number of Americans are going to be legally prevented from entering Europe when they wouldn't have had any trouble under the old system.
Yeah, it's just hyperventilating. If I'm spending five-digit sums of money on a trip to Europe, an extra $10-20 per person for some electronic nonsense is not going to stop the trip. It's a hassle, sure, but a pretty small one.
According to that Wikipedia page, this looks very similar to the ESTA.
Having had to apply for that last year, it's not at all clear to me how that could help prevent any kind of illegal or unwanted migration. It's not rocket science to say that "yeah, you're only visiting for a few days and that yes, you intend to go back".
So I think it absolutely is a political circus, aka retaliation.
Just like during COVID, when at one point cases started taking off in France again, some country (can't remember which, might have been the UK) started asking for a negative test before entering. Wouldn't you know it, the next day it became mandatory for people coming in the other way. Cases hadn't moved in that other country.
Retaliation is basically the default for visas. The data obtained from the ETIAS is no better than what they get from the airlines (APN) or scanning passports at the border.
Not only has the US unilaterally introduced these requirements already 15 years ago, but there are still 3 EU countries (Bulgaria, Cyprus and Romania) that are not even in the Visa Waiver Program - so I think some "retaliation" is in order...
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."
That was a long time ago and it was Linden Lab inviting me to some sort of Second Life open source discussion group.
I wouldn't have done much good there anyway so it was no big loss for anyone -- My spoken English was barely understandable at the time, I think most of the talk was related to the protocol which I wasn't even working with at the time.
Kind of a pity it didn't work out because I think it'd have been an entertainingly awkward experience for everyone involved, and I wouldn't have minded the English practice.
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 processing when your passport gets sent to USA and some agencies check that you are not a spy or something which may take anywhere from several months to infinity. Also even if you pass this processing, you will get visa for 1 year max instead of usual 3 years.
I know at least two such cases with my peers, one being my friend still waiting for visa decision 5 years later after Google accepted him for an internship and he got sent to administrative processing because of his job at security firm at the moment. Obviously, his internship expired years ago. From my experience, getting US visa is the worst by a wide margin compared with EU or UK.
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.
Maybe fewer people being able to attend in person will force more conferences to take accessibility seriously. WWDC seems to have taken this to heart, for example.
In general (it's complicated and it's not as simple as have a video camera in every session) tech conferences are doing a pretty good job of getting session content online these days. And, yes, Apple invests at least as much as anyone.
It's not really a replacement for attending a conference live but it's a mostly inexpensive (money and time) way to get exposed to a lot of the formal content of a conference.
> It's not really a replacement for attending a conference live but it's a mostly inexpensive (money and time) way to get exposed to a lot of the formal content of a conference.
This is something that has troubled me about in-person conferences for a while: they are inegalitarian. If they’re not really about the content, the only people who get the true benefit are those already privileged enough to be able to attend. That means the purpose of in-person conferences is to compound inequalities. We should not have them.
If you follow that thinking through though, it would mean that almost any "real world" interaction would further inequality, and that any kind of significant exchange of knowledge should be restricted to online spaces - so effectively going back to pandemic living, at least as far as meetups and conferences are concerned.
You could certainly do that but it's not a world that I'd personally would want to live in.
Maybe an alternative would be "distributed" events like e.g. Global Game Jam: Have not one venue but multiple, in different countries or "visa spaces", then link them all up online.
Also more focus on "hybrid" conferences: Make online attendance less second-class by e.g. allowing remote speakers with an in-venue audience, and local speakers with a partially remote audience; also let the remote audience ask questions and participate in discussions via zoom etc.
In general, I agree. I also found that "let the remote audience ask questions and participate in discussions via zoom etc." pretty much didn't work except for some smaller events. Yes, they could load questions into a queue which is something but, then, Q&A in a large conference session isn't great under the best of circumstances. "More a comment than a question" :-/
We shouldn’t throw out something beneficial because it’s not perfect — and doing so has already drastically degraded our societies.
Edit:
Personal anecdote — smaller academic conferences being cheap means that you actually get a mix of people. Most of the cost is travel and lodging ($150 for a week conference ticket). So you get a few more corporate people at them than you’d expect.
You can argue it’s classist, and it is, but society will always have a class system (eg, check out Russia and China at any point in time) — our question should then be “what is the most egalitarian system of classes we can have?”
I would suggest you get that with two ideas:
- your class is the log of your net worth
- there are affordable tickets to the structures of cultural power, eg conferences
I know that soil ecology and human sociology aren’t identical, but it might be worth considering why we don’t want to till soil too often [1] and why people might therefore prefer systems where there’s some cultural continuity — even at the expense of perfect meritocracy.
> getting US visa is the worst by a wide margin compared with EU or UK.
Indeed. I’m a Brazilian/Hungarian living in Ireland and Hungary did a number by telling the US that Hungarians born abroad can’t use the ESTA system and need to apply through the “normal” channels.
I had my interview scheduled for next week, but since I had to travel for a family emergency, I had it rescheduled to the next available slot… in mid-November. And all seems done through a for-profit third party and feels really, really scammy. Why would a government that has a very large embassy need a third party to manage scheduling visa interviews?
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")
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.
I should clarify that my friends and I are Russian citizens. I can imagine that entering USA is easier for an Irish citizen but I've heard not once or twice about Russian/Chinese/... speakers that were not able to get visa in time or were prohibited to enter US.
As an Indian the UK visa is way more work than US and the other part is US often gives you a 10 year visa whereas the UK gives 6 month visas so you have to go through the whole process every so often. EU is also more work. You often need to show hotel bookings, flights both ways and so on and if it gets rejected it is a lot of effort down the drain.
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.
I'm unsure. It's something beyond "don't be on campus" I also can't find any documentation about it. Happened to a client of my partner who was an ESL academic proofreader.
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.
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.
I worked in a building with a research reactor for years. In my office I had other students from China. A student from Iran worked on the reactor. We all went in tours together.
This is not a federal rule. No one was required to be any distance away from the reactor based on their nationality. No one checked passports at the entrance to our building. The doors were just open.
That's why you can't find this rule online anywhere. It's not a thing.
Sounds like your campus security went on a power trip? Or more likely you misunderstood the situation.
> No one was required to be any distance away from the reactor based on their nationality. No one checked passports at the entrance to our building.
Just because nobody enforces the rule doesn't mean it doesn't exist? It could be that the people who were supposed to enforce it correctly determined that the whole idea is BS and decided to save time.
It doesn't mean the rule doesn't exist and it can come back at anytime someone uninformed of this informal arrangement comes into the picture or goes on a power trip.
Unfortunately this kind of rule does sound absolutely plausible for politicians and administrative busybodies as a way to show that they’re “doing something” without actually evaluating the real risk or whether the proposed solution actually reduces said risk.
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.
(Proposed false flag operation where the US joint chiefs of staff wanted to commit terrorist acts in the US and blame them on Cuba as a pretext for invading the island; it got up to the bloody president who shot it down, so it was a very serious plan)
> 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 to the left"?
Also, "when was the last time" being answered with the 1980s, when we're in 2023 is downright embarrassing.
People have used the same justification for invasion since the time of the Roman republic. Let us not take justifications for imperialism at face value
A friend was doing a stint in Ghana as part of their degree, and was the same there. Had to get a visa, but no embassy in Norway, so had to use the one in Denmark.
IIRC they had to send an email to apply then had to mail passport and money, so had to go to the bank to get danish currency. The whole process took a couple of months.
I knew about visa being a thing, but hadn't traveled outside EU and US, so was a bit of an eye opener.
I applied for a visa to Ghana last year. They had a broken website. When I asked tech support what the issue was they invented a reason of "you applied too far in advance" which wasn't true. The level to which they just didn't give a damn was palpable.
I can't remember exactly what the issue was - something like a button or a drop down not working - but I managed to work around it in the end but it was very stressful. I had a whole bunch of flights, other visas, etc. hinging on this stupid broken website.
It's a whole different world to when I travel to Europe/US/Asia but it's not all that different to how my spouse experiences traveling (with an unfortunate passport). The websites in the west tend to work a bit better but they do all sorts of things like require a visa appointment at a visa center, throttle the number of slots, make you come two weeks from now on Tuesday at 11:24am exactly and then keep you waiting until 5pm to talk to somebody who doesn't even understand the rules of the visa you're applying for.
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.
Hardly unique to the US. As a US citizen, I've had to cancel on business speaking invitations because I couldn't fit the visa paperwork around my travel schedule.
> How about just give up and quit your job? It would have the same effect.
If by "it would have the same effect" you mean that it will be ignored, then maybe. But if you are saying that not attending international conferences is the same as not getting a job as a researcher in the first place, then I find this an exaggeration. Especially considering that one can participate in the scientific process by submitting their papers to journals, and that every country, including those in the Global South, can have their own conferences.
What you may refer to is prestige. But that's a separate matter altogether.
Have you ever participated in a research community? You’re going to be at a severe disadvantage compared to peers in the US if you’re unable to promote your work to, and network with, the leaders in your field (the majority of whom are based in the global North).
Also, many of the top publishing venues in CS are conferences, and it is not uncommon for them to require in-person presentations as a condition for acceptance.
So, in sum, if you want to have a scientific career, attending conferences in the US/Europe is almost a must, at least in CS.
> Have you ever participated in a research community?
Yes. A little bit. Though not in CS.
> You’re going to be at a severe disadvantage compared to peers in the US
> ...
> if you want to have a scientific career
What does having a scientific career mean to you? Are there universities outside of the global North? Do people hold positions in those universities? Is there any research work happening there? Can someone get a place there without travelling around the world? If the answer to these questions is yes, then how is it not a scientific career?
(I am not trying to compare the salary of a professor in a US university with one from a university in global South. I am simply curious about the blank statements "How about just give up and quit your job" or "if you want to have a scientific career").
As somebody from the "Global South", it's ridiculous to say that the average quality of work in top universities in, say, India, is on the same level as the average quality of work in top universities, in, say, the US.
This is not due to any difference in the inherent quality of the researchers, but due to (IMO) a lack of resources. This falls into two categories:
The first is the lack of a high-expertise peer/mentor community. Historically most research communities have centered in US/Europe. So even getting advice and mentorship is much more difficult, and the difficulty is exacerbated if you can't travel to conferences. Even if you manage to become established in your field, if you're not travelling to conferences and networking with other top researchers, you won't be privy to new research directions and questions, won't be able to take part in collaborations on interesting research projects, and won't have as productive a career as your colleagues in the global North. This also leads to a feedback loop (your research isn't exciting → you don't get to go to conferences to participate in research conversations → your research isn't exciting, and so on). In the end, the process of doing science is a social phenomenon, and you can't sequester yourself in your own country and expect to be a good researcher working on interesting problems.
The second category of resources is funding. The pool of money available for research is just much smaller in the global South, and makes certain kinds of research just impossible (think big distributed systems research, GPU-heavy ML research, etc.) So if you want to do that kind of research, you can't really stay in your home country.
> As somebody from the "Global South", it's ridiculous to say that the average quality of work in top universities in, say, India, is on the same level as the average quality of work in top universities, in, say, the US.
I am not making this claim at all.
> So if you want to do that kind of research, you can't really stay in your home country.
I remain puzzled by this statement.
I could understand the argument if it were phrased like so: "The best science in field X is done in countries Y and Z; I want to be part of the cutting-edge top-level research; therefore, I want to go to country Y or Z". Or if it were phrased like this: "Best-paying jobs in field X are concentrated in countries Y and Z; I want to get a top-paying job; therefore, I want to go to country Y or Z". But your argument is structured differently. You are claiming that if you want to do research in field X; indeed, if you want to have a career in field X, you cannot stay in your home country. What I do not understand is whether there is any research in field X done in your home country? Are there any departments in any universities at all in your home country specialising in field X? They may be third-rate; but do they exist? If they exist, then there must be someone working there, right? If that is the case, you cannot very well make an argument that one cannot be a researcher in field X, or have a career in field X without leaving the country.
This is kind of ridiculous if you know academics at all. Meeting people in person, knowing the right people makes a huge difference to even things like getting your papers accepted. Job committees in India look favorably at papers presented internationally. Most committee folks have no real idea about your work and go by prestige of vanues it was presented at, people who recommended you etc. Not being able to participate is essentially getting locked out.
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.
Visa processing for third world nationals isn't much better in the EU or the UK, although at least appointment waiting times are usually not measured in years.
Something else to be aware of--which I've heard second hand--is saying anything that implies you'll be in the country to work. This can potentially include an honorarium, travel expenses covered, etc. Just something to watch.
(As a US passport holder) attending conferences in most countries, much less answering some emails, without a specific business visa has never been an issue for me personally, but it can be an issue for some. (And business visas with letters of introduction etc. are required last time I got one from e.g. China.)
Yup. Visas have multiple types, and unless it's specifically for that, you're forbidden from doing anything that looks like work.
They also want to be quite sure you'll be returning after you're done, so a part of the application process is that there's something that ties you to your home country, like a job, house, etc. You're also expected to have enough savings to pay for anything you might need without working.
I travel on a B1/B2 visa for conferences. When asked for the purpose of my visit, a common follow-up question is if I am going to receive any remuneration for my talk.
It's a tricky question since sometimes speakers receive a reimbursement for travel costs. I imagine that answering "yes" might cause you a lot of headache.
A lot of countries (e.g. UK) seem not to have the clear B1/B2 separation that the US has with just a "standard" visa for US citizens and others covering routine business matters like attending conferences, meeting with customers, doing some work in your hotel room, etc. in addition to tourism stuff.
But you're right. No one really wants to hear about your travel expenses being covered or your nominal honorarium--which are absolutely routine for certain types of industry roles. Your company is covering it as a routine matter (and that applies if you're in business for yourself as well.)
The (usually) technically correct response is that your company will reimburse you in your home country.
My father-in-law is a salesman for women's apparel. Two of his largest lines are based in Canada, so he has to go there at least twice a year for sales meetings. However, his reimbursement is entirely covered by their US subsidiary. It's a working visa, but granted on entry and prohibits work that will be paid for in Canada (e.g., he can take orders for products that will be shipped to the US, but not for those that will be shipped to Canada).
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 never bother giving advance notification.
I have since been told that this is a scheme that some people use just to get a VISA for Europe, and then use the time for vacation once they have all paperwork in order. This creates a bias against researchers from these countries (I have been told by colleagues not to accept requests to speak at conferences from researchers in India because they will "never show up"). Annoyingly, my own experience does somewhat confirm this "advice", and it is extremely unfair for the people that genuinely are interested in traveling to attend conferences.
Happened three times with some researchers that tried to use conference as the main vacation (and they wanted to get paid!!!). They never show up. I tend to delete all the requests for invitation letters from people that are not referred by anyone.
Would be interesting to know how many of these visa applications eventually get rejected. Also, maybe some sort of deposit to be returned when participant shows up would discourage abuse.
Conferences are generally so expensive that early bird vs not is no longer the question at the forefront, but rather the sheer largeness of the number. Also early birds tend to save money on flights and conferences.
Very strange that this is your experience, because IME as an Indian who has to apply for Schengen visas 4-5 times a year it's actually easier to get a visa for tourism than to attend a conference or for business.
You need to supply fewer documents for a tourist visa, there's lesser scrutiny, and in many countries you're more likely to get a longer-duration visa (6 months rather than exact duration) for tourism than for a conference or business.
I have been denied a visa to attend business meetings in a Schengen country despite an explicit invitation from the concerned company registered in that country simply because the consulate couldn't believe that the meetings were scheduled over the span of ten days.
They wouldn't even blink at a tourist visa for the same duration.
Very interesting to know, thanks. Let me then ask: if getting a tourist visa is simpler, is there any problem in asking for a tourist visa even if your intention is attending a conference?
On the basis of almost zero relevant knowledge, I would guess that if the conference is paying you to speak (or to do anything else), you'll be in violation of local law, but otherwise you're fine.
1. You are misrepresenting the purpose of your visit and you can get deported and/or barred from entering the country. For example, you can be stopped and asked for your passport at any time (this has happened to me multiple times, even though technically it's against Schengen rules).
2. Visiting for 2-3 days makes sense for a conference, but it makes no sense for a vacation and you will raise flags. This would lead to a request for more information from the consulate plus a delay then a rejection, or just a straight rejection.
The dumbest thing is that all this friction is completely unnecessary. The EU can copy the homework of other countries mentioned by the author of the post, but are unable to for unfathomable bureaucratic reasons.
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 for tourism?
> 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 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.
> 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.
>What's the rationale for not allowing business travel but allowing the same people to travel for tourism?
Many countries don't draw the distinction at least for people with the right passport. But to the degree there's a real rationale (beyond possibly charging more for a business visa and red tape), it's probably something along the lines of the boundaries between routine business travel in another country and working in that country are blurrier than in the case of tourism and therefore some countries think it should attract more scrutiny.
You're right that I could (and have) attended tech events on my own time and my own dime and that seems like tourism by any reasonable definition but does that fact that I didn't take vacation time and maybe submitted an expense report really fundamentally change that?
> Long weekend "city breaks" are pretty common amongst the UK middle classes.
Presumably to nearby countries, not via 12-15h flights with layovers, and not after an onerous visa process?
I think you underestimate how much work is needed to submit a visa application. No one in their right mind would spend several days preparing documents and traveling for a total of 30 hours for just a 3 day holiday.
> 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
The difference is "what is the primary purpose of your visit".
There are no clear rules around this, but for Schengen countries generally you decide based on the day spent on each (because that's how you must decide which country to apply to as well, when doing a multi-country trip).
I am visiting Europe this year: attending a conference for 5 days and on holiday for two weeks. My primary purpose is tourism.
If it was 5 days of conference and 4 days of holiday, I would have to submit the application with the conference being the primary purpose, and classified as a business visitor visa.
> What's the rationale for not allowing business travel but allowing the same people to travel for tourism?
> Long weekend "city breaks" are pretty common amongst the UK middle classes.
In Europe with a 1-3 hour time difference and a 1-4 hour flight, yes.
In New York with a 5-hour time difference and an 8-hour flight, not so common. I'm sure that it happens, but it's not at all common. Jetlag alone would make that an athletic event, if your "leaving front door, returning back to front door" time is under 72 hours.
I'm not saying you're wrong and that I'd do that. But I've seen many travel agencies offer "New York weekend" package deals here in France. If they're doing that, I assume enough people take them up on it.
I remember at one point seeing ads in Boston for Icelandair that pretty clearly implied you might go to Iceland for a long weekend. It seemed a bit preposterous, but I was in Boston for just a couple days from San Francisco, and Iceland is actually closer to Boston than San Francisco is. And in the summer the Boston - Reykjavik time difference is only four hours.
Yes, I got caught out for misrepresenting my reason for visiting Canada once. My UK company provided tech support to UK government organisations and routinely sent people to Canada as part of this contract. All fine. They then sent me out to provide similar support to a Canadian govt org with the paperwork they provided to people attending conferences or sales meetings, etc. The immigration officers spotted the difference when they asked me a couple of simple questions that I answered naively. I was threatened with arrest and deportation unless I presented with the correct docs in 24 hours. It took me three days to get the right paperwork from the guys back home but because I was obviously a clueless techie being messed around by corporate the immigration people were okay with this.
(replying to myself because it’s too late to edit)
I just wanted to add that the whole experience was massively stressful and gave me much greater awareness of the challenges faced by people who can’t cross borders easily. I was given the 24 ultimatum when I arrived in Canada which was late on Sunday afternoon UK time. Luckily I had the mobile number of a very dynamic departmental director who was staggered that corporate had totally misunderstood the circumstances of my trip. He kicked some ass to make things happen and I was home and dry, although I didn’t know it at the time. My customers (the Canadian Army, bless them) were also very understanding and put up with my slightly ragged sleep-deprived performance resulting from lengthy phone calls to corporate lawyers in the middle of the night, Canadian time. They introduced me to a senior military stakeholder I had to brief as the ‘criminal software architect’ which was actually a superb icebreaker.
But my heart goes out to people who don’t have this sort of support.
Assuming the country in question requires an explicit business visa for you as an $X citizen to attend a conference, it's probably not a good idea to lie--even though you also probably won't get caught. (Many countries don't draw a distinction between tourism and a routine business trip or some combination thereof for at least some passports however.)
(And as the sibling comment notes, if you're just dropping in for a quick conference and heading home again, that probably is suspicious as a tourist.)
When you arrive to another country's border you need to state the purpose of your visit to a border control officer. If you say "conference" - you may not be allowed in because your visa is for another purpose, if you say "tourism" you lie to a government officer, which may result in various penalties according to the local laws.
I have a question. How does "break local laws" work?
I applied to a tourism Visa in say Netherlands or uk for 2 weeks.
After 5 days, I attend a "conference" of say 2 hours or something. Is it like the man in the suit sends a call to the home ministry who sends a Hollywood style swat team or the American ice agents to drag you out of the border ?
More like someone processing your next visa application getting automatically collected data on your previous visits from all kinds of sources public and private and seeing that you lied about your visit the last time.
Some of this is also a question of "do you want to take the risk of having an indelible black mark in your travel history?"
As an example, the US asks for your travel history (where you went and why) and a list of your social media accounts. It would be trivial to correlate a conference related social media post with a stated reason of tourism and flat that.
They might not do this, but I certainly would not want to jeopardise all future travel for that if.
Social media posts (not just from yourself but other attendees), credit card purchases, license plate scanners, the conference itself publishing the list of attendees etc. If someone you have not told knows where you had been then the government can know too. It's not guaranteed but the risk is unacceptable to some.
Clearview[1] is not shy about selling its facial recognition services to government agencies and continues to scrape social media for photographs. It is within the realm of possibility that the foreign service officer who issues visas may query a Clearview product for photos of a visa applicant, and get a detailed picture (ha!) about the subjects activities at a conference while they were on a tourist visa.
In Russia, the FSB monitors all attendees of conferences. If you attend a conference in Russia while on a tourist visa, the police will come up to you and force you to sign a police report that you have done wrong, and possibly pay a fine. I know that from firsthand experience. I would imagine that the situation is similar in China, Vietnam, Egypt, and other authoritarian states.
Very few people speak at conferences as a hobby. Even fewer speak at conferences as hobby about things they get paid for. Even fewer would be legitimately willing to do this if it included an expensive middle-of-the-night flight, jet lag, and a Visa application process.
I've done it. Of course, I didn't travel internationally just for the conference and I didn't need a visa, but I've attended tech conferences on my own--including speaking. Why not? And how many Europeans who attend FOSDEM or Americans who attend Flock (admittedly a lower bar than traveling internationally) are doing so on their own?
ADDED: And people with hobbies/interests like, say, medieval history absolutely will attend a conference/event as part of a vacation even if it has zero connection to a day job.
Generally, when you apply for a visa, there's documentation guiding you towards the correct type of visa based on purpose of visit. Everything I've seen buckets conferences under "business visa".
That changes the parameters of the hypothetical. Your original hypothetical was explicitly about misrepresenting the purpose of one's visit to a country, which one should not do because that's illegal. *OBVIOUSLY*.
Whether attending a conference for a hobby counts as a vacation trip or a business trip would be a question for the destination country's consular affairs office.
I know governments aren't always commonsensical but it would seem odd if someone (not in the business) would need a business visa to attend Comic-Con or similar.
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 any terrorist, spy, saboteur or mass murderer would answer “yes.” Doing so, whether or not by mistake, does not mean that the person will be banned from the United States, but it doesn’t help." (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/world/europe/terrorist-qu...)
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.
In addition to the legality issues that others have brought up, I have been asked questions about the details of my trip, which might be intended to weed out people doing the sort of thing you're asking about.
"Which hotel are you staying at?"
"Do you have an itinerary? Can I see it?"
"Why are you coming here?" (With a weird intonation of something like, why would anyone come here to vacation? It's so boring here!")
"What do you plan on doing while you're here?"
"Are you meeting anyone?"
"How do you plan to get back?"
Etc.
I think more often than not, the people asking probably don't even care about what your actual answer is, but want to see how you react to those questions, and if the answers make basic logical sense. I.e. "I'm vacationing for 2 weeks, but don't have a hotel.", or "I'm meeting friends and family at my vacation house, but I have never been here before."
A person might not remember the address of their hotel for example, but they'll be able to give a general description without freaking out, "It's a Hilton in Albany, I don't remember which." I would imagine that they're trying to distinguish between the natural nervousness that people have with interacting with border guards, vs people who are trying to do various illegal activities.
As a fun little sidenote:
I actually got tripped up by a guard one time because he asked a weirdly phrased question, "Is this your vehicle?" I took that to mean, "Is this vehicle stolen?", so I told him "Yes, it is mine." (...because I had paid to rent it). He asked why the plates didn't match my drivers license. I explained that it was a rental, and he got very angry and said, "Well I guess it isn't YOURS then, huh!?"
I didn't realize you could answer "Rental" to strictly Yes or No question! It was such a weird way of phrasing the question, because if I were to say, "No, this isn't my vehicle." the logical follow-up question would have been, "Why are you driving someone else's vehicle? Where are they? Why aren't they driving it!?"
For what it's worth, a common technique in those sorts of scenarios is that the questions asked don't really matter, what they are looking for is nervousness and evasive behavior. Don't read too much into why are they asking a specific question; they mostly want you to talk to gauge your mental state, with the idea that many people get nervous if they're committing a crime and made to talk to authority.
This is not always true and depends on things like other visas on your passport, how often do you travel abroad and so on. For people who are traveling for the first time outside India compared to those who have other first world country stamps things can be very different. The first time I visited Germany from India (with an invite from a university there), I got an exactly 6 day multiple entry visa which might have landed me in trouble even if my flight was delayed by over 3 hours. The next time when I visited the consulate with a B1 visa for US and a visa for UK, they were apologetic about asking me to come to the consulate and returned the visa fees saying you are our guest and gave a 3 month visa.
Could it be that their visas are rejected? I could understand not wanting to tell someone that I can't attend their conference because their country doesn't want me there, not exactly a nice thing to think about or admit to others.
If they have paid to register for your conference, it’s your duty to write those letters.
I doubt people having speaking slots at the conference will just skip out to go vacation. It’s not like they can’t vacation after the talk. More likely that they just didn’t get the visa because European visa processes, while better than US ones, are just slow.
It's not his duty to do anything, and he's explicitly saying people have accepted speaking slots then not shown up so your doubts are unfounded. Have you never attended a conference where there is a last-minute change in a speaker or talk? Theirs is not the first time I've heard of that happening, either.
Have you never attended a conference where a speaker was not from a developing country but didn't bother to show up anyway? I had
I say charge more, take higher deposits if needed but be more hands on with all speakers (not discriminating against "global south"): get their precise arrival info, always be in touch about their status, meet at the airport, organize their accommodation, etc. So they have no chance to escape your hospitality
I suggest you take a step back and think about how your comments come across so as not to unintentionally come off more harsh than you want.
In fact what I was replying to was someone saying it was an event organizer's "duty" to write invitation letters for conference attendees for Visa purposes, which it is objectively not. The country is irrelevant, the economic development of the country is irrelevant.
You literally just told me off saying it has nothing to do with anything though it was part of the context, and you tell me I'm harsh. The nature of context is it does not stop existing just because you don't mention it.
I very much agree it's exactly organizer's duty to write visa invitations, and without prejudice and discrimination, and if they want they can do other things to combat abuse as I suggest.
Whereas your idea that "it's not his(sic) job to do anything" is very dubious on many levels and no offense I hope I don't have a misfortune to attend a conf you organize :)
Err international attendees cannot get visas without such invitation letters, so if you want international attendees then you should write such letters. You can't both want international attendance and then not do the legwork to support that.
A large tech conference may have 100+ speakers. They're not all getting the white glove treatment.
Life does happen in any case--especially in these days when people are acutely aware that they can't show up at conferences with an illness. I've also filled in for a speaker who just totally forgot they had a session at the conference and were double-booked elsewhere. It happens. Might seem odd but it can happen when you might have a a dozen speaking slots a year and many more proposals in flight.
They couldn’t come because of any number of reasons: there wasn’t enough time to apply for visa because you issued the letter 1 month before the meeting, didn’t get visa, didn’t get visa on time, visa got approved but passport didn’t arrive on time etc. You also can’t get reimbursed in India without showing actual receipts of conference, hotel etc.
You seem to think that your letter is a guarantee of visa. It’s not.
Source: I’m an academic with both US and Indian experience.
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.
> in the US, whether you are permitted to enter and how long you may stay are determined by the person at the border
I don't believe this is specific to the US. The agent at the border always has the last decision on whether you can enter the country even if you have a valid visa and travel documents.
I've also noted that issue. I know of several people at my former job who traveled to the San Jose office and were turned back for some inane reason that had never been an issue before that time. US Border Guards have extreme latitude and they seem to like their power a bit too much.
Problem is that a single rejection forces you to go through the Visa process instead of the Visa-free process for the rest of your life: one of the questions on the entry form is (or was) "have you ever been denied entry", next to "are you a nazi war criminal" (not a joke). And answering "yes" on the former guarantees a whole lot of pain. If you answer "no" you're committing a felony.
The USA's entry system is inane, utterly dependent on the person in front of you and downright scary to me.
I've known conferences to move outside the US for this kind of reason, the pain was just too much and too many people couldn't get in.
Border guards in the US tend to be more strict than other countries though. I’ve heard plenty of stories of friends being refused entry into the US, and I don’t personally know of anyone who was rejected coming in to any other country.
It’s devastating when this happens because not only are you thrown out of the country on the next flight, but once you’ve been rejected at the border once, you can never apply for a simple online visa permit again. For the rest of your life you need to go to a consulate with your passport like this article describes.
I was almost denied entry once when I visited Hawaii. The immigration officer heard I was on vacation for a month and had no cash on me (who travels with cash?). Turns out he was worried I’d end up homeless. He didn’t realise that as an Australian, I get paid while on vacation and I had plenty of money in a bank account online.
This isn’t (just) a race thing. I’ve heard plenty of rejection stories from white, Australian men.
The US also has some quite byzantine rules. For example, let’s imagine I fly from Europe to Canada, with a 3 hour transit in US. I stay four months in Canada because I’m a UK citizen and Canada allows me to stay up to 180 days. I return to Europe using the same route via US.
If I did that I would have overstayed in the US. Because the US only allows a stay of 90 days under the Visa Waiver program, and even though I only spent a few hours in the US, the four months in Canada counts towards the 90 day limit. The US also doesn’t have airside transit like most countries.
The correct thing to do would have been to apply for a US transit visa so that I am not entering on VWP, or to route my flight so that it doesn’t transit in US.
Something I've started mentioning, is the US immigration and customs is also pretty rude to their own citizens. Coming back to the US has been the far more stressful border crossing in my experience.
> looks like Mongolia and the Caribbean are optimal places to organize conferences
The colour scheme of that map is attrocious, but perhaps you have a better monitor or better colour vision than me? I think Mongolia is "Visa available both on arrival or eVisa", which is presumably not as good as Kazakhstan's "Visa not required", for example.
That just means that they're taxing the arrivals. Turkey and Indonesia (for my country) switch between requiring a visa on arrival and not needing one. That's tied to lower/higher tourist numbers. If the number of tourists drop too much the visa on arrival is removed. That this is linked is the explanation I read in an Indonesian article on why they were removing the visa on arrival for my country.
The only slight annoyance might be that sometimes they want you to pay that "visa" in (crisp) USD, which means getting USD.
This post might be a little biased since the author holds an Indian passport. He tend to blame the conference organizers to help Indian people to organize the transfer (VISA talking) to their conference. The thing I'd like to suggest to conference organizers is to set up an online mirror that might be used for people that, temporarily, can't get a VISA.
If you blame conference organizers for some stupid rules about VISA, I think it's a little bit too much.. But maybe my opinion is biased too.
Did you read till the end? Look at the last section titled "What can you do"; I reproduce the list here.
- Announce the dates of the conference as early as possible (allows participants to book travel, visa appointments, maybe club multiple conferences)
- Provide invitation letters in a timely manner
- Call for participation as early as possible
- Notify speakers as soon as you can
This is a very reasonable ask. Each line is a request asking the conference organiser to do it as "soon as you can", or "timely manner" etc. He is merely asking conf organisers to be cognisant of foreign attendees time constraints.
The text preceding that list is “if … you want a diverse audience”, which suggests they’re asking conference organisers to send personalised invitation letters to every foreigner who wants to attend, not just speakers. That could mean thousands of letters.
Almost certainly not thousands given that most large tech conference attendees are North American and European. But it's totally routine for large conference organizers to provide visa letters for attendees upon request. e.g. https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-summit-europe...
If a person has registered for a conference (which I imagine involves paying money), it’s the responsibility of the conference organizer to provide a visa invitation letter (which can just be derived from a template; doesn’t have to be specialized), as many visa applications require such a letter. Otherwise they should refund the money and not accept applications from foreign participants at all.
Why organize the conference in a country like this in the first place? It's just better all round if organizers choose countries with better (easier) Visa systems than US/EU/UK/...
I know at least one that moved out the US for this reason.
This problem of late announcements also applies to travelers that don't need visa. Recently, a major CS conference announced accepted papers two months before the conference date. Since it was a large federated conference located in a tourist destination in Florida, in the middle of the season, traveling from Europe was particularly expensive when buying tickets on a short notice.
And there's the additional downside that it was too late to apply to workshops and posters at co-located conferences. Many major conferences take place in the US, which means that traveling just for a workshop paper might not be feasible for researchers based outside of the US due to university policies and budget constraints. Thus, it's a good opportunity to participate and publish additional results while you are already there.
Plus, getting hundreds of people to take flights from all over the world in order to watch keynotes seems very disconnected from current state of the world.
Yes, there are advantages to in-person meetings, keynotes, etc. But specifically for conferences they are undermined by the ecological price.
Conferences are almost never about talks, they are about networking. Not once great ideas emerged from casual discussion between conference attendees/speakers.
It’s very easy to forget how annoying Visas can be, if you are from a privileged country. I’m a German married to a South African, but before that we were long-distance dating. Me visiting her was effortless. Fly there, stand in line, get my stamps, done.
Her visiting Germany? A lot of paperwork and appointments in both countries and usually paying for a 36h document courier to get her all the documents in time because it always takes longer than expected …
And that’s not even talking about them marriage itself as SA is not one of those countries where you can (ab)use easy Danish marriages because she then would have to fly back to SA as she’s not allowed to change visas while not in her home country.
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. Among other fun documents we needed.
They have to apply for a visa/license to marry, which can be denied or take a long time or require whatever documents the authorities want, and I have the impression it requires them to leave the country too, before they are able to get married in Germany, but if they can travel and get married in Denmark without such difficulties then Germany automatically accepts the marriage.
Many countries don't allow non-citizens to marry citizens without an onerous administrative obstacle and/or a long time delay, and possible refusal. Unlike business travel visas, in some countries lack of formal permission prevents a marriage from having legal marriage status, so it's not like you can just quietly ignore the requirement.
Occasionally two people who want to marry can't do so by any route in either of their home counties.
It’s less the denial, time it takes, it’s more that Germany requires a lot more documents. My favorite is still "Befreiung von der Beibringung
des Ehefähigkeitszeugnisses" (Exemption from providing the certificate of marriageability) just because it’s such a mouthful and sounds crazy ;)
We could have gotten married with her here on a normal tourist visa, that wouldn’t have been an issue. But we didn’t want her to have to go back to change visas afterward, so we got married with a marriage visa (which converts to a spousal visa automatically)
I just finished running the Carolina Code Conference this weekend and I do want to comment on this part:
> But if you’re in my position, you need at least 2-3 months between the first and the last step. If your attendance is conditional on speaking at the conference (for example, if your company will only sponsor you if you’re speaking), then you need a minimum of 2-3 months between when speakers are notified and the conference starts.
There are a lot of moving parts here. As an organizer you need your speakers confirmed 2-3 months out so that you can announce them in time for people to buy tickets. Confirmed meaning informed, accepted and able to travel. If there’s a risk of visa questions impacting travel then it’s prudent to have a backup plan such as presenting remotely. You don’t want to have to change speakers especially if people may have bought tickets anticipating the presentation.
As an organizer you need your speakers confirmed 2-3 months out so that you can announce them
I don't think I've ever been to conference where all the speakers were announced more than a couple of day before the conference, and certainly way after last registration. Also I've never gone to a conference specifically because I wanted to see any of the speakers.
Do people choose which conferences to go to based on the main speakers?
Announcing a couple months out is pretty typical. But it doesn't really influence whether I attend an event or not. And if there's some keynoter I really want to see, there's always video.
> I don't think I've ever been to conference where all the speakers were announced more than a couple of day before the conference, and certainly way after last registration.
Not every conference, especially for small/new ones, are able to sell out purely on blind bird tickets.
I'd like to point out a case that the author has politely left out: that some conference organizers truly believe that if you were a good researcher then you would have moved to North America and/or Europe. And viceversa.
I know plenty of researchers from South America for whom COVID was a godsend as it allowed them to attend three virtual conferences for the price of one and where their virtual experience didn't make them feel like second class citizens. Those same researchers are now getting visa appointments for the US scheduled months after the end of the conferences.
And I'd like to point out that even if I'm physically in, say Canada, I might still need a visa to go to Germany.
Unless there's a clause somewhere that says people who have a visa for Canada can enter Germany visa-free — some countries actually do that.
For example, UAE (the country where Dubai is) normally requires visa for Indian citizens, but if you're an Indian citizen with a valid US visa, then you're eligible for visa-on-arrival for UAE[1]:
> All Indian citizens holding U.S. visas, green cards, U.K Resident Permits, or EU resident permits can receive entry visa upon arrival to UAE valid for 14 days for a charge of AED 100.
Not the OP, but the comparison it's apple to oranges.
In some parts of South America getting a visa to USA goes to a queue that can take 262 days. From SA (from a country with a not so strong passport) to Germany since we're Schengen the visa does not apply, but with a work contract it's less than 30 days in some big cities.
The point that I want to make here is that the sad reality is that Canada has a way stronger passport and good will from several countries than South America, that's why the comparison is not applicable.
> that some conference organizers truly believe that if you were a good researcher then you would have moved to North America and/or Europe. And viceversa.
If you moved to some country in Europe is is _harder_ for you to travel to US, and vice versa. First, embassies in Europe have fewer visa appointment slots in general than embassies in countries where visas are required for general population. These slots are generally reserved for EU citizens in need of long-term/immigration visas. Even more so for European embassies in US. Second, as you've already taken the immigration route once, you're seen as a potential immigrant with a risk of no return. Third, your documents are just not familiar to the embassy personnel. Like, in Berlin, in the batch of ten passports where nine of them are German and one Indian, embassy personnel will scrutiny one, maybe two of German ones and certainly the Indian one.
> If you moved to some country in Europe is is _harder_ for you to travel to US, and vice versa.
No it's not.
Anecdata: plenty of Indian citizens in Europe go troublefree to the US.
I personally know a few people.
> Second, as you've already taken the immigration route once, you're seen as a potential immigrant with a risk of no return.
You make it sound like they would illegally-immigrate to America.
Why would someone who's legally present in Europe (and presumably tax-paying) sneak away to America?
If such people want to immigrate to America it's fair to assume they would do it the proper way (instead of going there on a tourist visa and disappearing).
> Anecdata: plenty of Indian citizens in Europe go troublefree to the US.
> I personally know a few people.
I have my anecdata too, I know a few people who are travelling to Europe and they're getting single entry fixed dates visas every time. Sure they "go troublefree" by some definition, but in their home country they'd most certainly get long-term multivisas. And that's not even mentioning queue times...
> You make it sound like they would illegally-immigrate to America.
Have you ever been on a visa interview in US embassy? These guys view most people as willing to illegally immigrate to America. It's your burden to prove that you're going to return, and every fact counts.
> Why would someone who's legally present in Europe (and presumably tax-paying) sneak away to America?
Higher salaries, better job market, better living conditions, you name it.
> If such people want to immigrate to America it's fair to assume they would do it the proper way (instead of going there on a tourist visa and disappearing).
The proper way when you are selling your soul to a corporation for 3 to 5 years (L1)? Or the proper way when you are playing lottery with little-to-no chance to win (DV)? Or the proper way when you are playing lottery with a slightly higher chance to win, but with a 10+ years path to permanant resident status (H1B)? Like, the only somewhat working way to legally immigrate to America is to either grind portfolio for O1 visa, or to go study and try very hard to change status there.
US immigration system is so fucked up there is no proper way easier than crossing Mexican border and legalizing as a refugee. Or "disappearing" on tourist visa.
> I know a few people who are travelling to Europe and they're getting single entry fixed dates visas every time
I thought you were talking about visas to the US. How is people "travelling to Europe" relevant?
> Have you ever been on a visa interview in US embassy?
Yes I have. Twice. For two different visa categories at separate points in time.
In both cases my interview with the consular officer was very pleasant and took less than 5 minutes, and the first time he even said "enjoy your trip!”.
Now, I know a lot of people's US visas get rejected for whatever reason. I don't know why that is. Nor do I know why it was easy for me and difficult for others.
> Higher salaries, better job market, better living conditions, you name it.
> US immigration system is so fucked up there is no proper way easier than crossing Mexican border and legalizing as a refugee. Or "disappearing" on tourist visa.
My previous post was about whether or not it's harder for non-Americans to apply for a US visa from Europe. I was not talking about the general immigration situation in the US.
Rhetorical question — if a non-American non-European were to sneak into America via Mexico, why would they go to the trouble of settling into Europe first?
This is borderline flamewar, for no good reason. I wouldn't be replying further. Have a good day.
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.
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 certainly adds significant complexity.
And if it's in too exotic a location, it's probably not super-convenient to get to and it also probably screams boondoggle to the managers who have to approve the trip.
When I was an analyst we really didn't much care for when a company would put on an event at some desert resort a lot of the time (around Phoenix was generally OK--if in winter). Even with them picking up a lot of expenses, it still cost us money out of pocket and it invariably took a good additional day out of out schedules relative to just having it in San Francisco.
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)
I can speak for the ACL conferences (disclaimer: which I volunteered to organize a couple times)
Streaming the talks, having questions via chat, putting all papers and posters online, multiple chat rooms, this is all there. Content-wise you can access everything. And since remote participants don't eat, their fee is a bit lower. There are also experiments on making poster sessions more interactive, but no one wants to use shared headphones in a loud room to talk to the (remote) authors.
The real challenge is: how do you get those attending in person to interact with those that are virtual only? Will you take out your phone and hang around in the chat rooms during the break?
Gather.Town is currently being used for virtual poster sessions, and in that respect it works well. I've also seen it used successfully for discussion in small groups.
There are some disadvantages that keep it from going beyond that: you cannot choose who you want to talk with, meaning you need to stay away from other people at the risk of having to talk to a stranger. And since "virtual" means "whenever you feel like it", there's a good chance that the people you want to meet are not there at the same time as you.
If you intend your conference to be “international” in any sense, do not hold it in the United States (I am a U.S. citizen). Here is just one example for why: https://daniel.haxx.se/us-visa.html
The U.S. makes it extremely difficult to visit, routinely denying visas to all kinds of people with no explanation.
While I empathize with him and think it's ridiculous that he has to jump though so many hoops just to get a 3-dat visa, his complains should be addressed towards his own government and the EU who are the ones that should negotiate this sort of things.
Back the day when I was in the academia I suggested some fixed set of countries visa friendly to host those conferences on AI/Databases.
The point that I made for the organizers is that, you can have clear instructions to the immigration offices and/or border control of those places if they had the full plan in advance: number of attendees, all info of the attendees already set in those departments, cross-check with their own embassies and consulates, etc.
Their justification in that time was that it's important to rotate in different cities because it closes the ties with the local academic community, but I did not brought that; can be a bit harsh but the whole thing sounded a reason to made academic tourism instead to foster a knowledge sharing.
Take that conference[1] for example and it's last venues:
2023 - Singapore
2022 - Seattle
2021 - Amsterdam
2020 - Online
2019 - Copenhagen
2018 - Vancouver
2017 - Como
2016 - Boston
2015 - Vienna
2014 - Silicon Valley
2013 - Hong Kong
2012 - Dublin
2011 - Chicago
2010 - Barcelona
2009 - New York
2008 - Lausanne
2007 - Minnesota
Unless that you have a strong passport or if you're from US/EU it's quite unlikely that you can have all the visas for attend all those conferences.
One thing is missing from this discussion: Visa processing times have shot up since before covid, and new organizers were still (naively) following timelines from a few years ago. They’ll adjust lead times to compensate, but the root cause is the needless increase in visa processing lag.
That’s something the governments need to fix, and it has much worse impacts than conference attendance woes.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 232 ms ] threadFor Europe, I think (not sure) if you travel there frequently, you are eligible for a longer-duration multiple-entry visa [1] (the linked website is NOT an official government website). I know somebody with such a type of visa.
[1] https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/schengen-visa-types/
I guess the 30 Days visa are J visa ?
I was under the impression that 5 years was the norm, considering a lot of undergrad courses (in engineering especially) take about that long to complete.
Grad schools too can take that long if you're aiming for a PhD.
(Although, when you graduate your F1 expires even if there's still time left on it; so you can't continue staying in the US after graduating without obtaining an OPT, or a different type of visa, PR or whatever).
From what I gather it mostly depends on how the person reviewing your application thinks it's likely you might break your visa terms (stay longer than you should, work when you're not allowed to). Usually happens for younger people or people involved with problematic industries (military etc)
EDIT: sorry for the misinformation, ESTA expires after 2 years OR when the passport expires [0]
[0] https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1126?language=en_US
[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-...
From your link:
> Travelers must have a valid Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) approval prior to travel and meet all requirements explained below. If you prefer to have a visa in your passport, you may still apply for a visitor (B) visa.
So it's not as complex as the visa process and can be all done online. The ESTA lasts for 2 years (as far as I can remember).
edit: spelling
Think of ESTA as an opportunity to search for you in terrorist & crime databases ahead of time, as doing it at the time of the entry is logistically hard.
If you are declined for ESTA you need to apply using the usual process at the embassy/consulate.
Overwhelming majority yes, exceptions are citizens of: Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus.
From my circle of friends it seems like random chance, and because there is no reason given for the refusal one can only speculate. When I got my B-1/B-2 visa, my interview was very quick (I'd even dare to say closer to 1 minute). Whereas I have a couple of friends that applied for a travel visa and were rejected after being "interrogated" more heavily. When it comes to travel visas, I would assume they would mostly filter for potential illegal immigration, but all those I know that got rejected were pretty well "rooted" in the country.
There might just be the fact that getting an invitation letter from a company is considerably more important than receiving one from anyone else.
The Americans thought Turkey should run it to avoid them taking up a communist government
There's still un peacekeepers there keeping the conflict quiet iirc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Travel_Information_an...
FFS
Having had to apply for that last year, it's not at all clear to me how that could help prevent any kind of illegal or unwanted migration. It's not rocket science to say that "yeah, you're only visiting for a few days and that yes, you intend to go back".
So I think it absolutely is a political circus, aka retaliation.
Just like during COVID, when at one point cases started taking off in France again, some country (can't remember which, might have been the UK) started asking for a negative test before entering. Wouldn't you know it, the next day it became mandatory for people coming in the other way. Cases hadn't moved in that other country.
Later I went for a different reason and if I recall the time to actually getting a visa was around 2 months.
I wouldn't have done much good there anyway so it was no big loss for anyone -- My spoken English was barely understandable at the time, I think most of the talk was related to the protocol which I wasn't even working with at the time.
Kind of a pity it didn't work out because I think it'd have been an entertainingly awkward experience for everyone involved, and I wouldn't have minded the English practice.
I know at least two such cases with my peers, one being my friend still waiting for visa decision 5 years later after Google accepted him for an internship and he got sent to administrative processing because of his job at security firm at the moment. Obviously, his internship expired years ago. From my experience, getting US visa is the worst by a wide margin compared with EU or UK.
It's not really a replacement for attending a conference live but it's a mostly inexpensive (money and time) way to get exposed to a lot of the formal content of a conference.
This is something that has troubled me about in-person conferences for a while: they are inegalitarian. If they’re not really about the content, the only people who get the true benefit are those already privileged enough to be able to attend. That means the purpose of in-person conferences is to compound inequalities. We should not have them.
You could certainly do that but it's not a world that I'd personally would want to live in.
Maybe an alternative would be "distributed" events like e.g. Global Game Jam: Have not one venue but multiple, in different countries or "visa spaces", then link them all up online.
Also more focus on "hybrid" conferences: Make online attendance less second-class by e.g. allowing remote speakers with an in-venue audience, and local speakers with a partially remote audience; also let the remote audience ask questions and participate in discussions via zoom etc.
We shouldn’t throw out something beneficial because it’s not perfect — and doing so has already drastically degraded our societies.
Edit:
Personal anecdote — smaller academic conferences being cheap means that you actually get a mix of people. Most of the cost is travel and lodging ($150 for a week conference ticket). So you get a few more corporate people at them than you’d expect.
You can argue it’s classist, and it is, but society will always have a class system (eg, check out Russia and China at any point in time) — our question should then be “what is the most egalitarian system of classes we can have?”
I would suggest you get that with two ideas:
- your class is the log of your net worth
- there are affordable tickets to the structures of cultural power, eg conferences
I know that soil ecology and human sociology aren’t identical, but it might be worth considering why we don’t want to till soil too often [1] and why people might therefore prefer systems where there’s some cultural continuity — even at the expense of perfect meritocracy.
[1] - https://crops.extension.iastate.edu/encyclopedia/frequent-ti...
Indeed. I’m a Brazilian/Hungarian living in Ireland and Hungary did a number by telling the US that Hungarians born abroad can’t use the ESTA system and need to apply through the “normal” channels.
I had my interview scheduled for next week, but since I had to travel for a family emergency, I had it rescheduled to the next available slot… in mid-November. And all seems done through a for-profit third party and feels really, really scammy. Why would a government that has a very large embassy need a third party to manage scheduling visa interviews?
[1] https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/044/241/ski...
It's hugely confronting and embarrassing for invited speakers, paper authors to arrive and then get excluded and escorted off campus.
But I'm curious, what is the distance?
The most likely situation is an over cautious interpretation of https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-inf...
Of the entire university?
What universities have this policy?
The most likely situation is an over cautious interpretation of https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-inf...
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.
This is not a federal rule. No one was required to be any distance away from the reactor based on their nationality. No one checked passports at the entrance to our building. The doors were just open.
That's why you can't find this rule online anywhere. It's not a thing.
Sounds like your campus security went on a power trip? Or more likely you misunderstood the situation.
Just because nobody enforces the rule doesn't mean it doesn't exist? It could be that the people who were supposed to enforce it correctly determined that the whole idea is BS and decided to save time.
It doesn't mean the rule doesn't exist and it can come back at anytime someone uninformed of this informal arrangement comes into the picture or goes on a power trip.
Unfortunately this kind of rule does sound absolutely plausible for politicians and administrative busybodies as a way to show that they’re “doing something” without actually evaluating the real risk or whether the proposed solution actually reduces said risk.
Our reactor had plenty of rules. The NRC visits regularly and inspects your security among many other things.
I know graduate students from Iran in nuclear engineering on grants by the federal government who worked with the reactor. This is not a rule.
There are enough problems out there, we don't need to invent more.
These are the basic rules in case you're curious.
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part073/p...
https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism/
Out of curiosity what's the latest terrorist attack sponsored by the Cuban state?
(Proposed false flag operation where the US joint chiefs of staff wanted to commit terrorist acts in the US and blame them on Cuba as a pretext for invading the island; it got up to the bloody president who shot it down, so it was a very serious plan)
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Sponsors_of_Terrorism_(U...
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 to the left"?
Also, "when was the last time" being answered with the 1980s, when we're in 2023 is downright embarrassing.
Whataboutism can work both ways
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.
IIRC they had to send an email to apply then had to mail passport and money, so had to go to the bank to get danish currency. The whole process took a couple of months.
I knew about visa being a thing, but hadn't traveled outside EU and US, so was a bit of an eye opener.
I can't remember exactly what the issue was - something like a button or a drop down not working - but I managed to work around it in the end but it was very stressful. I had a whole bunch of flights, other visas, etc. hinging on this stupid broken website.
It's a whole different world to when I travel to Europe/US/Asia but it's not all that different to how my spouse experiences traveling (with an unfortunate passport). The websites in the west tend to work a bit better but they do all sorts of things like require a visa appointment at a visa center, throttle the number of slots, make you come two weeks from now on Tuesday at 11:24am exactly and then keep you waiting until 5pm to talk to somebody who doesn't even understand the rules of the visa you're applying for.
Do you have any other valuable advice? How about just give up and quit your job? It would have the same effect.
If by "it would have the same effect" you mean that it will be ignored, then maybe. But if you are saying that not attending international conferences is the same as not getting a job as a researcher in the first place, then I find this an exaggeration. Especially considering that one can participate in the scientific process by submitting their papers to journals, and that every country, including those in the Global South, can have their own conferences.
What you may refer to is prestige. But that's a separate matter altogether.
Also, many of the top publishing venues in CS are conferences, and it is not uncommon for them to require in-person presentations as a condition for acceptance.
So, in sum, if you want to have a scientific career, attending conferences in the US/Europe is almost a must, at least in CS.
Yes. A little bit. Though not in CS.
> You’re going to be at a severe disadvantage compared to peers in the US
> ...
> if you want to have a scientific career
What does having a scientific career mean to you? Are there universities outside of the global North? Do people hold positions in those universities? Is there any research work happening there? Can someone get a place there without travelling around the world? If the answer to these questions is yes, then how is it not a scientific career?
(I am not trying to compare the salary of a professor in a US university with one from a university in global South. I am simply curious about the blank statements "How about just give up and quit your job" or "if you want to have a scientific career").
This is not due to any difference in the inherent quality of the researchers, but due to (IMO) a lack of resources. This falls into two categories:
The first is the lack of a high-expertise peer/mentor community. Historically most research communities have centered in US/Europe. So even getting advice and mentorship is much more difficult, and the difficulty is exacerbated if you can't travel to conferences. Even if you manage to become established in your field, if you're not travelling to conferences and networking with other top researchers, you won't be privy to new research directions and questions, won't be able to take part in collaborations on interesting research projects, and won't have as productive a career as your colleagues in the global North. This also leads to a feedback loop (your research isn't exciting → you don't get to go to conferences to participate in research conversations → your research isn't exciting, and so on). In the end, the process of doing science is a social phenomenon, and you can't sequester yourself in your own country and expect to be a good researcher working on interesting problems.
The second category of resources is funding. The pool of money available for research is just much smaller in the global South, and makes certain kinds of research just impossible (think big distributed systems research, GPU-heavy ML research, etc.) So if you want to do that kind of research, you can't really stay in your home country.
I am not making this claim at all.
> So if you want to do that kind of research, you can't really stay in your home country.
I remain puzzled by this statement.
I could understand the argument if it were phrased like so: "The best science in field X is done in countries Y and Z; I want to be part of the cutting-edge top-level research; therefore, I want to go to country Y or Z". Or if it were phrased like this: "Best-paying jobs in field X are concentrated in countries Y and Z; I want to get a top-paying job; therefore, I want to go to country Y or Z". But your argument is structured differently. You are claiming that if you want to do research in field X; indeed, if you want to have a career in field X, you cannot stay in your home country. What I do not understand is whether there is any research in field X done in your home country? Are there any departments in any universities at all in your home country specialising in field X? They may be third-rate; but do they exist? If they exist, then there must be someone working there, right? If that is the case, you cannot very well make an argument that one cannot be a researcher in field X, or have a career in field X without leaving the country.
(As a US passport holder) attending conferences in most countries, much less answering some emails, without a specific business visa has never been an issue for me personally, but it can be an issue for some. (And business visas with letters of introduction etc. are required last time I got one from e.g. China.)
They also want to be quite sure you'll be returning after you're done, so a part of the application process is that there's something that ties you to your home country, like a job, house, etc. You're also expected to have enough savings to pay for anything you might need without working.
It's a tricky question since sometimes speakers receive a reimbursement for travel costs. I imagine that answering "yes" might cause you a lot of headache.
But you're right. No one really wants to hear about your travel expenses being covered or your nominal honorarium--which are absolutely routine for certain types of industry roles. Your company is covering it as a routine matter (and that applies if you're in business for yourself as well.)
My father-in-law is a salesman for women's apparel. Two of his largest lines are based in Canada, so he has to go there at least twice a year for sales meetings. However, his reimbursement is entirely covered by their US subsidiary. It's a working visa, but granted on entry and prohibits work that will be paid for in Canada (e.g., he can take orders for products that will be shipped to the US, but not for those that will be shipped to Canada).
I have since been told that this is a scheme that some people use just to get a VISA for Europe, and then use the time for vacation once they have all paperwork in order. This creates a bias against researchers from these countries (I have been told by colleagues not to accept requests to speak at conferences from researchers in India because they will "never show up"). Annoyingly, my own experience does somewhat confirm this "advice", and it is extremely unfair for the people that genuinely are interested in traveling to attend conferences.
I don't think that my comment did that. I'm precisely acknowledging that such bias already exists, and that the situation is indeed unfair.
You need to supply fewer documents for a tourist visa, there's lesser scrutiny, and in many countries you're more likely to get a longer-duration visa (6 months rather than exact duration) for tourism than for a conference or business.
I have been denied a visa to attend business meetings in a Schengen country despite an explicit invitation from the concerned company registered in that country simply because the consulate couldn't believe that the meetings were scheduled over the span of ten days.
They wouldn't even blink at a tourist visa for the same duration.
1. You are misrepresenting the purpose of your visit and you can get deported and/or barred from entering the country. For example, you can be stopped and asked for your passport at any time (this has happened to me multiple times, even though technically it's against Schengen rules).
2. Visiting for 2-3 days makes sense for a conference, but it makes no sense for a vacation and you will raise flags. This would lead to a request for more information from the consulate plus a delay then a rejection, or just a straight rejection.
The dumbest thing is that all this friction is completely unnecessary. The EU can copy the homework of other countries mentioned by the author of the post, but are unable to for unfathomable bureaucratic reasons.
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 for tourism?
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 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.
Many countries don't draw the distinction at least for people with the right passport. But to the degree there's a real rationale (beyond possibly charging more for a business visa and red tape), it's probably something along the lines of the boundaries between routine business travel in another country and working in that country are blurrier than in the case of tourism and therefore some countries think it should attract more scrutiny.
You're right that I could (and have) attended tech events on my own time and my own dime and that seems like tourism by any reasonable definition but does that fact that I didn't take vacation time and maybe submitted an expense report really fundamentally change that?
Presumably to nearby countries, not via 12-15h flights with layovers, and not after an onerous visa process?
I think you underestimate how much work is needed to submit a visa application. No one in their right mind would spend several days preparing documents and traveling for a total of 30 hours for just a 3 day holiday.
> 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
The difference is "what is the primary purpose of your visit".
There are no clear rules around this, but for Schengen countries generally you decide based on the day spent on each (because that's how you must decide which country to apply to as well, when doing a multi-country trip).
I am visiting Europe this year: attending a conference for 5 days and on holiday for two weeks. My primary purpose is tourism.
If it was 5 days of conference and 4 days of holiday, I would have to submit the application with the conference being the primary purpose, and classified as a business visitor visa.
> What's the rationale for not allowing business travel but allowing the same people to travel for tourism?
No idea, you'd have to ask the consulates.
In Europe with a 1-3 hour time difference and a 1-4 hour flight, yes.
In New York with a 5-hour time difference and an 8-hour flight, not so common. I'm sure that it happens, but it's not at all common. Jetlag alone would make that an athletic event, if your "leaving front door, returning back to front door" time is under 72 hours.
Now extrapolate that to "long weekend in California." and it's again much less common.
If you google "long weekend in Iceland" there are articles (https://www.travelandleisure.com/weekend-getaways/long-weeke..., https://inspiralized.com/lifestyle/a-long-weekend-trip-to-ic...) that suggest doing this. It actually sounds not unreasonable if you can manage to power through that first day.
I just wanted to add that the whole experience was massively stressful and gave me much greater awareness of the challenges faced by people who can’t cross borders easily. I was given the 24 ultimatum when I arrived in Canada which was late on Sunday afternoon UK time. Luckily I had the mobile number of a very dynamic departmental director who was staggered that corporate had totally misunderstood the circumstances of my trip. He kicked some ass to make things happen and I was home and dry, although I didn’t know it at the time. My customers (the Canadian Army, bless them) were also very understanding and put up with my slightly ragged sleep-deprived performance resulting from lengthy phone calls to corporate lawyers in the middle of the night, Canadian time. They introduced me to a senior military stakeholder I had to brief as the ‘criminal software architect’ which was actually a superb icebreaker.
But my heart goes out to people who don’t have this sort of support.
(And as the sibling comment notes, if you're just dropping in for a quick conference and heading home again, that probably is suspicious as a tourist.)
I applied to a tourism Visa in say Netherlands or uk for 2 weeks.
After 5 days, I attend a "conference" of say 2 hours or something. Is it like the man in the suit sends a call to the home ministry who sends a Hollywood style swat team or the American ice agents to drag you out of the border ?
As an example, the US asks for your travel history (where you went and why) and a list of your social media accounts. It would be trivial to correlate a conference related social media post with a stated reason of tourism and flat that.
They might not do this, but I certainly would not want to jeopardise all future travel for that if.
1. https://www.clearview.ai/
In the U.S.A., lying on a government form is illegal, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001. I can't imagine other countries treating that differently.
If you go to a conference for a hobby that's tourism, right?
ADDED: And people with hobbies/interests like, say, medieval history absolutely will attend a conference/event as part of a vacation even if it has zero connection to a day job.
Whether attending a conference for a hobby counts as a vacation trip or a business trip would be a question for the destination country's consular affairs office.
That's exactly what I was told (as a statement, not as a question) by an official a few years ago when applying for a visa for a trip to Germany.
[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 any terrorist, spy, saboteur or mass murderer would answer “yes.” Doing so, whether or not by mistake, does not mean that the person will be banned from the United States, but it doesn’t help." (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/world/europe/terrorist-qu...)
"Which hotel are you staying at?"
"Do you have an itinerary? Can I see it?"
"Why are you coming here?" (With a weird intonation of something like, why would anyone come here to vacation? It's so boring here!")
"What do you plan on doing while you're here?"
"Are you meeting anyone?"
"How do you plan to get back?"
Etc.
I think more often than not, the people asking probably don't even care about what your actual answer is, but want to see how you react to those questions, and if the answers make basic logical sense. I.e. "I'm vacationing for 2 weeks, but don't have a hotel.", or "I'm meeting friends and family at my vacation house, but I have never been here before."
A person might not remember the address of their hotel for example, but they'll be able to give a general description without freaking out, "It's a Hilton in Albany, I don't remember which." I would imagine that they're trying to distinguish between the natural nervousness that people have with interacting with border guards, vs people who are trying to do various illegal activities.
As a fun little sidenote:
I actually got tripped up by a guard one time because he asked a weirdly phrased question, "Is this your vehicle?" I took that to mean, "Is this vehicle stolen?", so I told him "Yes, it is mine." (...because I had paid to rent it). He asked why the plates didn't match my drivers license. I explained that it was a rental, and he got very angry and said, "Well I guess it isn't YOURS then, huh!?"
I didn't realize you could answer "Rental" to strictly Yes or No question! It was such a weird way of phrasing the question, because if I were to say, "No, this isn't my vehicle." the logical follow-up question would have been, "Why are you driving someone else's vehicle? Where are they? Why aren't they driving it!?"
I doubt people having speaking slots at the conference will just skip out to go vacation. It’s not like they can’t vacation after the talk. More likely that they just didn’t get the visa because European visa processes, while better than US ones, are just slow.
I say charge more, take higher deposits if needed but be more hands on with all speakers (not discriminating against "global south"): get their precise arrival info, always be in touch about their status, meet at the airport, organize their accommodation, etc. So they have no chance to escape your hospitality
In fact what I was replying to was someone saying it was an event organizer's "duty" to write invitation letters for conference attendees for Visa purposes, which it is objectively not. The country is irrelevant, the economic development of the country is irrelevant.
I very much agree it's exactly organizer's duty to write visa invitations, and without prejudice and discrimination, and if they want they can do other things to combat abuse as I suggest.
Whereas your idea that "it's not his(sic) job to do anything" is very dubious on many levels and no offense I hope I don't have a misfortune to attend a conf you organize :)
Life does happen in any case--especially in these days when people are acutely aware that they can't show up at conferences with an illness. I've also filled in for a speaker who just totally forgot they had a session at the conference and were double-booked elsewhere. It happens. Might seem odd but it can happen when you might have a a dozen speaking slots a year and many more proposals in flight.
I should probably have made it clear that I'm talking about conferences without registration fees.
You seem to think that your letter is a guarantee of visa. It’s not.
Source: I’m an academic with both US and Indian experience.
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.
I don't believe this is specific to the US. The agent at the border always has the last decision on whether you can enter the country even if you have a valid visa and travel documents.
Problem is that a single rejection forces you to go through the Visa process instead of the Visa-free process for the rest of your life: one of the questions on the entry form is (or was) "have you ever been denied entry", next to "are you a nazi war criminal" (not a joke). And answering "yes" on the former guarantees a whole lot of pain. If you answer "no" you're committing a felony.
The USA's entry system is inane, utterly dependent on the person in front of you and downright scary to me.
I've known conferences to move outside the US for this kind of reason, the pain was just too much and too many people couldn't get in.
Visited Iran when sanctions weren't in place, no ESTA for you. You get treated like a criminal, and have to pay more money for a proper visa.
It’s devastating when this happens because not only are you thrown out of the country on the next flight, but once you’ve been rejected at the border once, you can never apply for a simple online visa permit again. For the rest of your life you need to go to a consulate with your passport like this article describes.
I was almost denied entry once when I visited Hawaii. The immigration officer heard I was on vacation for a month and had no cash on me (who travels with cash?). Turns out he was worried I’d end up homeless. He didn’t realise that as an Australian, I get paid while on vacation and I had plenty of money in a bank account online.
This isn’t (just) a race thing. I’ve heard plenty of rejection stories from white, Australian men.
If I did that I would have overstayed in the US. Because the US only allows a stay of 90 days under the Visa Waiver program, and even though I only spent a few hours in the US, the four months in Canada counts towards the 90 day limit. The US also doesn’t have airside transit like most countries.
The correct thing to do would have been to apply for a US transit visa so that I am not entering on VWP, or to route my flight so that it doesn’t transit in US.
looks like Mongolia and the Caribbean are optimal places to organize conferences.
The colour scheme of that map is attrocious, but perhaps you have a better monitor or better colour vision than me? I think Mongolia is "Visa available both on arrival or eVisa", which is presumably not as good as Kazakhstan's "Visa not required", for example.
That just means that they're taxing the arrivals. Turkey and Indonesia (for my country) switch between requiring a visa on arrival and not needing one. That's tied to lower/higher tourist numbers. If the number of tourists drop too much the visa on arrival is removed. That this is linked is the explanation I read in an Indonesian article on why they were removing the visa on arrival for my country.
The only slight annoyance might be that sometimes they want you to pay that "visa" in (crisp) USD, which means getting USD.
If you blame conference organizers for some stupid rules about VISA, I think it's a little bit too much.. But maybe my opinion is biased too.
- Announce the dates of the conference as early as possible (allows participants to book travel, visa appointments, maybe club multiple conferences)
- Provide invitation letters in a timely manner
- Call for participation as early as possible
- Notify speakers as soon as you can
This is a very reasonable ask. Each line is a request asking the conference organiser to do it as "soon as you can", or "timely manner" etc. He is merely asking conf organisers to be cognisant of foreign attendees time constraints.
I know at least one that moved out the US for this reason.
And there's the additional downside that it was too late to apply to workshops and posters at co-located conferences. Many major conferences take place in the US, which means that traveling just for a workshop paper might not be feasible for researchers based outside of the US due to university policies and budget constraints. Thus, it's a good opportunity to participate and publish additional results while you are already there.
Yes, there are advantages to in-person meetings, keynotes, etc. But specifically for conferences they are undermined by the ecological price.
Her visiting Germany? A lot of paperwork and appointments in both countries and usually paying for a 36h document courier to get her all the documents in time because it always takes longer than expected …
And that’s not even talking about them marriage itself as SA is not one of those countries where you can (ab)use easy Danish marriages because she then would have to fly back to SA as she’s not allowed to change visas while not in her home country.
What is this about? I'm not sure whatever phenomena you're referring to are well known outside of Germany.
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.
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. Among other fun documents we needed.
Many countries don't allow non-citizens to marry citizens without an onerous administrative obstacle and/or a long time delay, and possible refusal. Unlike business travel visas, in some countries lack of formal permission prevents a marriage from having legal marriage status, so it's not like you can just quietly ignore the requirement.
Occasionally two people who want to marry can't do so by any route in either of their home counties.
We could have gotten married with her here on a normal tourist visa, that wouldn’t have been an issue. But we didn’t want her to have to go back to change visas afterward, so we got married with a marriage visa (which converts to a spousal visa automatically)
> so you can get married in Denmark, which is an easy affair and doesn’t take much
Denmark has next to no requirements for the marriage, they even advertise easy marriages. Germany has … a lot ;)
> But if you’re in my position, you need at least 2-3 months between the first and the last step. If your attendance is conditional on speaking at the conference (for example, if your company will only sponsor you if you’re speaking), then you need a minimum of 2-3 months between when speakers are notified and the conference starts.
There are a lot of moving parts here. As an organizer you need your speakers confirmed 2-3 months out so that you can announce them in time for people to buy tickets. Confirmed meaning informed, accepted and able to travel. If there’s a risk of visa questions impacting travel then it’s prudent to have a backup plan such as presenting remotely. You don’t want to have to change speakers especially if people may have bought tickets anticipating the presentation.
It’s really complicated.
I don't think I've ever been to conference where all the speakers were announced more than a couple of day before the conference, and certainly way after last registration. Also I've never gone to a conference specifically because I wanted to see any of the speakers.
Do people choose which conferences to go to based on the main speakers?
Topics and speakers specifically. The lineup is a huge factor.
I’m sure we all have our reasons but it’s something I put a huge emphasis on personally.
Not every conference, especially for small/new ones, are able to sell out purely on blind bird tickets.
I know plenty of researchers from South America for whom COVID was a godsend as it allowed them to attend three virtual conferences for the price of one and where their virtual experience didn't make them feel like second class citizens. Those same researchers are now getting visa appointments for the US scheduled months after the end of the conferences.
Unless there's a clause somewhere that says people who have a visa for Canada can enter Germany visa-free — some countries actually do that.
For example, UAE (the country where Dubai is) normally requires visa for Indian citizens, but if you're an Indian citizen with a valid US visa, then you're eligible for visa-on-arrival for UAE[1]:
> All Indian citizens holding U.S. visas, green cards, U.K Resident Permits, or EU resident permits can receive entry visa upon arrival to UAE valid for 14 days for a charge of AED 100.
[1] https://www.uae-embassy.org/visas-services/visas-for-non-us-...
In some parts of South America getting a visa to USA goes to a queue that can take 262 days. From SA (from a country with a not so strong passport) to Germany since we're Schengen the visa does not apply, but with a work contract it's less than 30 days in some big cities.
The point that I want to make here is that the sad reality is that Canada has a way stronger passport and good will from several countries than South America, that's why the comparison is not applicable.
[1] - https://www.uol.com.br/nossa/noticias/agencia-estado/2023/08...
If you moved to some country in Europe is is _harder_ for you to travel to US, and vice versa. First, embassies in Europe have fewer visa appointment slots in general than embassies in countries where visas are required for general population. These slots are generally reserved for EU citizens in need of long-term/immigration visas. Even more so for European embassies in US. Second, as you've already taken the immigration route once, you're seen as a potential immigrant with a risk of no return. Third, your documents are just not familiar to the embassy personnel. Like, in Berlin, in the batch of ten passports where nine of them are German and one Indian, embassy personnel will scrutiny one, maybe two of German ones and certainly the Indian one.
No it's not.
Anecdata: plenty of Indian citizens in Europe go troublefree to the US.
I personally know a few people.
> Second, as you've already taken the immigration route once, you're seen as a potential immigrant with a risk of no return.
You make it sound like they would illegally-immigrate to America.
Why would someone who's legally present in Europe (and presumably tax-paying) sneak away to America?
If such people want to immigrate to America it's fair to assume they would do it the proper way (instead of going there on a tourist visa and disappearing).
> Anecdata: plenty of Indian citizens in Europe go troublefree to the US.
> I personally know a few people.
I have my anecdata too, I know a few people who are travelling to Europe and they're getting single entry fixed dates visas every time. Sure they "go troublefree" by some definition, but in their home country they'd most certainly get long-term multivisas. And that's not even mentioning queue times...
> You make it sound like they would illegally-immigrate to America.
Have you ever been on a visa interview in US embassy? These guys view most people as willing to illegally immigrate to America. It's your burden to prove that you're going to return, and every fact counts.
> Why would someone who's legally present in Europe (and presumably tax-paying) sneak away to America?
Higher salaries, better job market, better living conditions, you name it.
> If such people want to immigrate to America it's fair to assume they would do it the proper way (instead of going there on a tourist visa and disappearing).
The proper way when you are selling your soul to a corporation for 3 to 5 years (L1)? Or the proper way when you are playing lottery with little-to-no chance to win (DV)? Or the proper way when you are playing lottery with a slightly higher chance to win, but with a 10+ years path to permanant resident status (H1B)? Like, the only somewhat working way to legally immigrate to America is to either grind portfolio for O1 visa, or to go study and try very hard to change status there.
US immigration system is so fucked up there is no proper way easier than crossing Mexican border and legalizing as a refugee. Or "disappearing" on tourist visa.
I thought you were talking about visas to the US. How is people "travelling to Europe" relevant?
> Have you ever been on a visa interview in US embassy?
Yes I have. Twice. For two different visa categories at separate points in time.
In both cases my interview with the consular officer was very pleasant and took less than 5 minutes, and the first time he even said "enjoy your trip!”.
Now, I know a lot of people's US visas get rejected for whatever reason. I don't know why that is. Nor do I know why it was easy for me and difficult for others.
> Higher salaries, better job market, better living conditions, you name it.
> US immigration system is so fucked up there is no proper way easier than crossing Mexican border and legalizing as a refugee. Or "disappearing" on tourist visa.
My previous post was about whether or not it's harder for non-Americans to apply for a US visa from Europe. I was not talking about the general immigration situation in the US.
Rhetorical question — if a non-American non-European were to sneak into America via Mexico, why would they go to the trouble of settling into Europe first?
This is borderline flamewar, for no good reason. I wouldn't be replying further. Have a good day.
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.
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 certainly adds significant complexity.
When I was an analyst we really didn't much care for when a company would put on an event at some desert resort a lot of the time (around Phoenix was generally OK--if in winter). Even with them picking up a lot of expenses, it still cost us money out of pocket and it invariably took a good additional day out of out schedules relative to just having it in San Francisco.
There are lots of other countries that balance both cost and convenience (ie: Turkey, UAE, Malaysia, Qatar)
Streaming the talks, having questions via chat, putting all papers and posters online, multiple chat rooms, this is all there. Content-wise you can access everything. And since remote participants don't eat, their fee is a bit lower. There are also experiments on making poster sessions more interactive, but no one wants to use shared headphones in a loud room to talk to the (remote) authors.
The real challenge is: how do you get those attending in person to interact with those that are virtual only? Will you take out your phone and hang around in the chat rooms during the break?
I thought its stated goal was to create a virtual environment more conductive to the very useful small talk between presentations.
There are some disadvantages that keep it from going beyond that: you cannot choose who you want to talk with, meaning you need to stay away from other people at the risk of having to talk to a stranger. And since "virtual" means "whenever you feel like it", there's a good chance that the people you want to meet are not there at the same time as you.
The U.S. makes it extremely difficult to visit, routinely denying visas to all kinds of people with no explanation.
The point that I made for the organizers is that, you can have clear instructions to the immigration offices and/or border control of those places if they had the full plan in advance: number of attendees, all info of the attendees already set in those departments, cross-check with their own embassies and consulates, etc.
Their justification in that time was that it's important to rotate in different cities because it closes the ties with the local academic community, but I did not brought that; can be a bit harsh but the whole thing sounded a reason to made academic tourism instead to foster a knowledge sharing.
Take that conference[1] for example and it's last venues:
2023 - Singapore 2022 - Seattle 2021 - Amsterdam 2020 - Online 2019 - Copenhagen 2018 - Vancouver 2017 - Como 2016 - Boston 2015 - Vienna 2014 - Silicon Valley 2013 - Hong Kong 2012 - Dublin 2011 - Chicago 2010 - Barcelona 2009 - New York 2008 - Lausanne 2007 - Minnesota
Unless that you have a strong passport or if you're from US/EU it's quite unlikely that you can have all the visas for attend all those conferences.
[1] - https://recsys.acm.org/
There are poorer countries with better passports because their fellow countrymen aren't known for abusing the visa system.
That’s something the governments need to fix, and it has much worse impacts than conference attendance woes.