Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jquaint 58 days ago
I miss PyCon US a lot and I'm sad I can't go. As a Canadian, recent USA ICE government actions have made it really hard for me to attend.

No conference is worth getting thrown in an ICE detention camp. This actually has happened to people from my country. [1] [2]

A big part of this conference is the non-USA residents who show up.

> We attribute this largely to the sad but understandable decline in willingness of international attendees, as well as some vulnerable domestic attendees

It seems like part of the hotel problem is the lack of international attendees that are stopping travel to the USA travel due to recent government actions.

In general USA-Canada Travel has been down all year. [3]

Hoping for a future PyCon that is as big, but I don't have to take risks around my freedom to attend!

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/10/ice-canadian...

[2] https://ca.news.yahoo.com/canadian-man-detained-ice-dies-200...

[3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2026/03/19/canada...

1 comments

The cases you link relate to someone with previous convictions that could affect their legal status and someone potentially filing faulty documents and overstaying their legal status. They were not just visitors, so not sure why you are comparing these cases to you simply going to a conference unless you are being deliberately dishonest to make a point
Yea, I've seen this a few times now on here where people are acting like ICE is going to arrest them for being here legally for a conference.
I concede that [3] is not the best case of this reading more into it. My point still stands though.

If visitors are one immigration mistake away from weeks in a detention camp, or any other unjust punishment it's reasonable that visitors would not want to visit.

A quick search suggests 25k Canadians enter the US daily for multi-day trips. If ICE was any real concern here for Canadians we'd hear a lot more about it I think.