I have two conferences booked and paid for in the US this year. (I'm Canadian)
I am canceling the one in April.
The other is harder for me to cancel, as its my industry main conference for the year.
It will hurt me professionally, and fanatically not to go.
But stories like this, White woman with good paper work, and regular traveler to the USA (similar to myself), No criminal record, No apparent reason, no ability to call a lawyer, getting detained for weeks, is making me very nervous.
My company is considering starting our own local conference, outside the US, as an alternative. A expensive and distracting exercise that I would prefer not to have to do.
I am not worried about gun violence in the US at the moment.
I am worried about arbitrary detention without representation or recourse.
Dell shipped a monitor to my billing address (office) instead of the shipping address (home). Because of COVID there was no one at my office but it was picked up by "GUARD". Never found the monitor.
DELL wanted me to do an insurance claim with the shipper. The shipper wanted me to do the insurance claim with DELL. Took two months to figure out. In the meantime, I just went to a brick-and-mortar place and bought a monitor.
In the end DELL credited me the money for the missing monitor and would not provide a cash refund. I ended up selling the DELL credits to the next person who had an equally horrible experience with them.
People are allowed to have their own communities. If a persons comments, only to get a enrage and entice a negative response then they are a troll. They should be shown the door https://xkcd.com/1357/
Shame