> On Tue, 18 Mar 2025 at 13:01, Andrew Alston <aa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi All, > > The New York Times recently published a list of countries planned for outright travel bans or sharply restricted visas, and another long list of countries that could end up in either the restricted or travel ban list. It's kind of disheartening to note that 22 out of the 43 countries on the list are in Africa. Agreed. But this is *far* beyond the scope of the IETF. > Irrespective of where they are, my question to the IESG is simple, will the IETF look at moving IETF 127 (Scheduled for San Francisco) should these travel bans go into effect. I cannot see how it is possible to hold an IETF meeting in a country that is effectively barring entry to so many participants. Fine words. But impractical ones. Changing existing hotel bookings because of this sort of ugliness can be expensive and/or unworkable. Good luck finding a hotel/venue that could accommodate an IETF meeting at short notice. If we’ve signed contracts for IETF127, it’ll probably be too late to do anything about that. The secretariat usually has to book hotels well over a year in advance of a meeting. There are heavy penalties for cancelling those contacts. [ISTR the Hyatt in Vancouver waived the ~$1M they were due when we cancelled at short notice because of Covid-19.] So if a host country introduces painful visa demands at short notice, we just have to suck it up and take account of that when booking hotels for meetings 2-3 years out. If the travel rules change in the interval between the contract getting signed and the meeting taking place, there’s little that can be done to mitigate that.
