RISC-V moved to Switzerland as well a while ago. I think it's a shame to see stuff like this happening. Regardless, of where one stands currently in the current environment making standards bodies want to move or move events to other countries is not a good.
Regardless of the political situation, the EU is probably a more friendly environment for a standards body taking their stance in interoperability into account.
More importantly, and according to your link, only Estonia rejected 50+% Indian applications, everyone else rejected less than 50%, with only 2 others anywhere near 50% (Malta and Slovenia).
So out of 29 countries in the Schengen area only 3 were anywhere near the 50% mark and all 3 are tiny countries as far as both area and populations are concerned (those 3 combined account for only 4 million people in total).
Also, just to take one of those 3, Estonia has an overall high rejection rate in comparison to all the others, and that started happening after the pandemic.
Schengen isn't "different from EU". It originally was separate from EU, but since 1999 has been an aspect of the EU. Per Wikipedia:
> Originally, the Schengen treaties and the rules adopted under them operated independently from the European Union. However, in 1999 they were incorporated into European Union law by the Amsterdam Treaty, while providing opt-outs for the only two EU member states that had remained outside the Area: Ireland and the United Kingdom (which subsequently withdrew from the EU in 2020). Schengen is now a core part of EU law, and all EU member states without an opt-out which have not already joined the Schengen Area are legally obliged to do so when technical requirements have been met. Several non-EU countries are included in the area through special association agreements.
Yes, but the inclusion of a non-EU country in an EU programme as a special exception (not unique to Schengen) doesn’t thereby make it a non-EU programme, which is a natural interpretation of what you said
I never wrote that Schengen "is not an EU programme", I pointed out succintly that the countries in Schengen and the countries in EU are not the same thing.
In fact there are also EU countries NOT in Schengen. And there are countries in Europe but not in the EU which are not in Schengen either.
I would guess that 90% of the applications were for travel, not work.
> their issuance are up to the hosting country’s policies
These countries don't even bother to apply their policies. Some cases I heard about indicate that they randomly reject applications, without reviewing them.
Ah, you’re right. The linked article doesn’t say, but apparently a Schengen Visa is “for short-term purposes, such as tourism or business trips. Work permits are apparently not counted in these numbers, then.
As to whether they are conforming tot heir own policies or not, I can’t find any evidence either way in the linked article. They’re just stating the numbers.
>Estonia, Malta and Slovenia rejected the highest percentage of Schengen visa applications from India last year, while Germany, Italy and Hungary were most accommodating.
Sounds like Estonia, Malta, and Slovenia didn't want their countries to become transits for illegal immigration from India to the UK.
Countries like Germany get legitimate Indian immigration for work and higher education so their rejection rate is lower.
As far a I know, all of the listed countries are reasonably safe to travel to. I’ve not heard any stories of arbitrary detention from any of them, which is what this article is (mostly) about.
Trans people might not enjoy Slovakia or Hungary right now, but I’m not sure they are unsafe to visit for them (yet)? Someone local might fill me in here…
Yeah, I've seen that. It's been well documented that they are slipping into authoritarianism, nationalism and even a dictatorship. Free speech is not really in place anymore. I was just not very well informed about how civil liberies for trans people look, specifically. Whether the country is safe to travel to for conferences being the issue at hand. I see on Wikipedia that Orban has ended "legal recognition of transgender Hungarians", which I guess is probably significative of the trend, if nothing else.
It’s not unsafe for anyone to visit the US either. Unless you’re violating the law in some way, like presenting false documents or overstaying a visa - in which case there would be consequences like in any other country. Sure mistakes can happen on rare occasions, like in any country, but “arbitrary” detention isn’t a thing. That’s just sensationalism from a biased news media that has no idea why anyone was denied or detained, since that isn’t public information.
I don’t know if you’ve read about it but apparently if a trans woman has “F” in her passport and a border agent determines that she was previously a man, that’s now considered fraudulent and grounds for detention and deportation.
Overstaying a visa in any other (developed) country does not result in this kind of detention. These people are not even being given due process. I’m sure each of them is detained for some mistake in their paperwork, but some of these stories are really not flattering to the ICE.
> Overstaying a visa in any other (developed) country does not result in this kind of detention.
The US doesn't have a monopoly on immigration horror stories: Australian immigration illegally detained an Australian citizen for 10 months. [0] They illegally deported another Australian citizen to the Philippines, and when they discovered their mistake, their initial response was to cover it up rather than try to rectify it. [1]
This is a 20 year old article and no we don't have "nazis kill foreigners with some regularity". Yes hate-crime happens, but you make it sound like an active war zone where you have to be afraid of your life if you are "foreign" looking.
> I'd wager for tourists it's very safe in Germany.
Unless they're Black or "look Muslim", in which case I'd stay the fuck out of Eastern Germany. There's more recent reports as well, e.g. [1] - and it's been a massive issue for Eastern Germany, especially since the rise of Pegida [2].
But don't get me wrong, Western Germany also has its no-go areas, especially anything rural. The large cities tend to be decently safe from far-right violence - but even the smaller ones can be dangerous. Just last week a friend of a friend and her child was attacked in Landshut near Munich by a drunkard (and no it's not hearsay, there's a police report).
Regarding your knowledge on this topic your recommendation is an insult.
Every month a crazy asylum seeker drives into a crowd of people here, I don’t make this up look it up.
All kinds of outdoor festivities are undergoing brutal security regulations, making them unprofitable and many don’t even happen anymore because of this.
Not even mentioning the knife crimes which are absurdly.
Nazi crimes are the lowest they have been in history. Most problematic are the antisemitic tendencies from the Palestinian movement at the moment.
> Every month a crazy asylum seeker drives into a crowd of people here,
Did you forget (or not hear) the Magdeburg x-mas market car attacker was an AfD supporter and antiislamic? And the Mannheim one was a German gardener with "Reichsbürger" connections?
It doesn't quite make for snappy headlines, so a lot of people never hear these details…
The Madgeburg terrorist is a Saudi Arabic refugee which dislikes the Islam and not really an AfD supporter, but mentioned that he liked some position regarding the Islam critique the party has.
The Mannheim terrorist is indeed a German but I guess that the exception confirms the rule.
Overall all extrem attacks if from right, left, foreigners are an issue and need to be adressed accordingly. The problem which the Germany people have with the current state of affairs is that the bad behaving asylum seekers mostly the ones from the middle east get a soft treatment to say the least when they commit heinous crimes and the deterrence of appropriate punishment through law and order is not given.
You call someone who has lived in Germany for 18 years a refugee, and dismiss his AfD sympathies. That says nothing about him and everything about you really.
Try to look a little bit beyond your polarized bubble. I'll be happy to meet you halfway there.
Well he is official an political refugee in Germany because of his anti islamic activist activity, his origin country wants to prosecute him. He was until his arrest an anti islamic activist and had a very active social media presence in which he lamented about the way Europe and especially Germany are handling the refugee crisis which are mostly Muslims. In this context he reposted and referred to some AFD politicians and their position on the crisis.
Does that make him an AFD supporter?
Afaik his social media was so messy that people would connect him to various even contradicting things. That the big press settled with AFD supporter after they found some repost is lazy and misleading.
I did not claim the article contained that information, I specifically claimed it did not. It is an example for non-deadly violence that indeed does occur regularly there. https://www.bpb.de/themen/rechtsextremismus/dossier-rechtsex... is a source for the murders and also describes why the statistics are hard to gather.
109 murder in over 30 years is not "regularly" either, more people die from falling of stairs in a single year.
Meanwhile there where over 750 group rapes/attempts in 2023 alone of which 50% of the perpetrators where foreigners. But I guess that one wouldn't count as "regularly" for you....
Hungary is run by an authoritarian leader (Viktor Orban) who has strongly aligned itself with Christian nationalism and is opposed to immigration, gay rights, and what it calls “Western literalism”.
What makes you say that it is family-friendly with a blooming economy?
Orbán just banned Pride events nationwide, and vowed to use facial recognition software to fine anyone attending. This all in an attempt to placate the minority of the populace who want these kind of draconian measures (polling points out that the majority of Hungarians do not support this ban), and to draw attention away from the inflation, economy, and terrible state of healthcare and education.
A utopia for white Christian traditionalist families who feel Putin is just a misunderstood leader trying to protect his people. Not quite as family friendly to any other family. Family-friendly to me means that a place is actually conductive to raising a family, regardless of what your children grow up to be. This includes children who discover that they are gay or trans (or even just atheist or non-Christian). And are families made up of two gay parents welcome too? Otherwise 'family-friendly' is just a fascist dog whistle.
Does that mean you actually approve of banning something like a Pride event?
'Gender ideology' as a term is awfully vague and not really a thing outside of extreme-right politics. For some this appears to even include homosexuality and expressions of a non-binary gender identity, in addition to acknowledging the concept of gender dysphoria and transgenderism. The way the right-wing Hungarian political parties are using that term to me has nothing to with a critical or conservative stance with regards to transgender healthcare, or healthy public debate. Rather it seems to serve as a deliberately constructed straw man.
The problem is that no matter what restrictive policies and laws are enacted, gay, non-binary, transgender, and other queer Hungarians exist.
I'm personally not in favor of pride but I don't feel THAT strongly about it to be in favor of banning it either. This is how I imagine most of the country feels. What I was getting at with my first comment is that if our opposition fully owns up to being pro-gender that would torpedo their chance of defeating FIDESZ (which I think is ultimately more important than anything else in country level politics).
>'Gender ideology' as a term is awfully vague and not really a thing outside of extreme-right politics. For some this appears to even include homosexuality and expressions of a non-binary gender identity, in addition to acknowledging the concept of gender dysphoria and transgenderism.
Yeah this is where we are getting into fundamental disagreements. I, and most people I know just flat out don't believe that you can transition into being a woman as a man or vice versa. It's just not a thing. Much like how I don't become a car overnight if I sleep in a garage and make motor sounds. To me the whole topic transgenderism seems like some kind of mass psychosis where people delude first themselves and then threaten others to follow along with their delusion. Sure, wearing a skirt and calling yourself Jane as a Joe doesn't hurt anyone of course, where I draw the line is when this inevitably turns into demanding that others be a part of this farce.
>The way the right-wing Hungarian political parties are using that term to me has nothing to with a critical or conservative stance with regards to transgender healthcare, or healthy public debate. Rather it seems to serve as a deliberately constructed straw man.
It kind of is a strawman. But in a "broken clock is right twice a day" way I have to give this one to FIDESZ. As long as they are preemptively preventing stories like these[0] occurring here, I can't fault them for this one. That being said, I hope TISZA won't give any concessions on this either.
> I, and most people I know just flat out don't believe that you can transition into being a woman as a man or vice versa.
I think I see where you're coming from. To be fair, I don't think many people actually believe in a magic fairy who turns men into women or vice versa.
But : In the playground, have you never looked at some kid at a distance, squinted, and gone 'I wonder if they're a girl or a boy, it's hard to tell'?
I know I've had that experience myself back in the '80s, before there was this much debate.
I could have said Switzerland, but I believe that my point expands to the entirety of the EU, why I expanded a bit.
As some of you sibling commenters also write: Not all parts of the Schengen / EU is equally - just like you probably wouldn't move these things to rural Alaska.
If you’re saying that being able to legally bring cannabis into a country is a test for whether the IETF can host their meetings there… I don’t know if that is accurate.
Sure, Singapore has draconian laws when it comes to narcotics. But surely everyone attending will be aware of this? It’s been widely reported over the decades how foreign nationals have gotten life sentences or even the death penalty for drug running. What I’m saying is that Singapore are up front about it and it’s not enforced arbitrarily. Leaving your personal stash at home and abstaining for a few days should hopefully not be too difficult for the attendant engineers.
I am aware of that, but the fact that it was still on the books matters. For one, it has psychological impact, and for another if some police officer in a bad mood doesn't like your face geometry or number of thumbs, things like this can become 'power trip utilities' even if they're thrown out a few hours later.
Those are very fair points. I too am glad that the law was repealed.
I frequently get the impression that the policymakers in Singapore are more progressive than they reveal, but are extremely cautious about loosening up because they don't want to antagonise certain voter groups (e.g. people of certain religious persuasions). It is quite telling that the law was repealed in its entirety only in 2023, one year before the former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stepped down from his position.
It's true that since 2007 charges have been laid by the police in a few cases, these have been challenged, and variously overturned or thrown out from court.
So, enforcement was certainly attempted and people were certainly detained for periods of time and forced to defend against charges that were laid.
It's not readily clear how often charges under Section 377 (1860-) or Section 377A (1938-) were laid in Singapore prior to 2007 (or of the charges laid how many cases came to trial and how many convictions occurred).
