How is this not naked racism? Or do race-based anti-discrimination laws simply not apply to some government jobs?
Discriminating based on citizenship status is usually illegal, but US security clearance is typically contingent on being a US citizen. The relevant anti-discrimination laws have an exemption for "national security purposes"
So, the latter: they get a free pass to do racial and national origin discrimination. That was my answer, thank you.
It's a question of whether or not you or your spouse have ongoing relationships with Chinese nationals and could, as a result, be subject to influence by the Chinese government.
If you were married to someone who, say, had fled China and had no connection to anyone there, that's likely to be fine. If you're married to someone who has a whole extended family back in China and visits them four times a year, well, that's pretty obviously a potential vulnerability that's going to be considered as part of a background investigation.
It's not a question of ethnicity or race, it's a question of having avenues of influence by a foreign government.
I feel like the reception would be different if we were talking about "woke-friendly" demographics.
But that aside, I hear you. My major confusion is that I never see the woke crowd running in to get super sensitive about things like this when the topic is Chinese people. I feel like they'd lose their shit if we were talking about Arabs, for example.
Don’t get it twisted. It’s just racism.
I'd also refute the idea that nationality is a proxy for race, especially for a country as large and diverse as China. China is _far_ from the only nation with an Asian populace--many of the ethnicities in China can be found in neighboring countries and across Asia.
The residents of those various places, as I understand things, see it differently.
Just like race, one has no say in where they were born. You don’t get to arbitrarily change it if you don’t like the one that was assigned to you by the people with the most arms in the region in which you happen to be born.
Its about allegiance to a country. Not your race.
If you come to the US from China, revoke your Chinese citizenship, become a US citizen and limit your contact to Chinese citizens, you can get a security clearance.
Also a security clearance is not a right.
Also vulnerability to manipulation. So you'll be denied if you're heavily in debt and have a gambling problem, even if you're absolutely loyal and patriotic.
You would think people would know better but if you ever get bored and decided to browse clearance rejection decisions you see dozens of people losing their clearance each year because they looked at porn on their work computer.
1. There was a man who loved his dog in a way that one is not supposed to love a dog.
2. There were a couple people who liked crotch ventilation while riding around on a motorcycle.
The reason being that otherwise there's nothing stopping you from renouncing your citizenship, stealing the secrets, and defecting in exchange for being granted citizenship again.
Eg Uighurs aren’t referred to as Chinese when they emigrate abroad like Han are, even though they are both supposedly Chinese when citizens of the PRC. In that case, if I married a Uighur with a PRC passport, my security clearance would still be in jeapordy, if I married a Chinese (Han) or Uighur with a Canadian passport, there is less of a problem depending on when/if they naturalized.