[Foundation-l] Wikimania 2006 - host city contest to open onSeptember 1st 20

Tue Aug 16 17:06:38 UTC 2005

On 8/16/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Zachary Harden wrote:
> > My country, the United
> > States, is very hard to get into and some of our Wikipedians from
> > overseas will have problems getting in, such as those coming from China.
> 
> This is widely believed, but is it actually true?
> 

For what it's worth, folks I know in Central and South America have
nearly no chance to get here (into the US) on a tourist visa unless:
 * they have a really really high-paying job in their country of origin, and/or
 * have a lot of kids in their country of origin, and/or
 * own a lot of real estate in their country of origin

The US is very picky, and if there's any likelihood that people will
not return from a country, they will not issue the visa. From past
experience, the same applies to other countries (I know of similar
experiences in Russia).

For North America I would instead recommend Canada. It's fairly easily
accessible by car or plane from the US and as far as I know has less
restrictive visitor policies.

-ilya haykinson