I travel around the world a couple of times a year to some specific tech conferences, and I’ve boycotted the States on principle since the post-9/11-TSA BS started. And it’s not 'coz I personally come form a place they’d have an issue with, it’s solidarity (and self-respect). So although “Trumps America” is indeed 3x more distasteful than that, I’m long past my tipping point on that.
But from TFA:
I was sitting in on an organising committee for our 'Con (annually, held in the US, Europe, and one other region when things go well), and they informed us that there was NO WAY Canada would ever get a chance to host due to the general dearth of passport-holders in the US. Apparently, it would be financially crippling to try and do a North American version of the event that would be self-selected to only the USians that could get it together to travel outside of their country. It was sadly enlightening.
So I think there are actually logistic/economic reasons why ‘just’ crossing a border would be prohibitive to getting the numbers together for some types of conference.
