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Comment by cltsang | Hacker News Reader

How did you get that impression? From what the article says America is only getting more conscious about foreigners from China, not foreigners in general. They are quite different.

This is hardly a surprising move considering the recent realization that the Chinese government has been pushing propaganda against American values like freedom, democracy, and basic human rights, on American soil. One notable example is confucius institutes [0].

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2019/01/1...

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It's hard not to get that impression with cage-camps at the borders, asking foreign travelers for all their social media details and locking out nationalities like Iranians and Chinese from certain ventures.

Yet, here you are claiming it's "all just Chinese propaganda", apparently completely unaware about the fact that a statement like that is pretty much it's very own propaganda by deflecting everything that could be wrong as a mere invention by the "enemy from outside".

But when outrageous claims are made about China [0], the vast majority of people just gobble them up like it's manifest truth itself, without even thinking about questioning the methodology or the involved parties motives.

[0] https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mapping-xinjiangs-re-educatio...

Did I claim "all just Chinese propaganda"? I was taught in mathematical induction lessons that necessary condition does not equal sufficient condition.

I don't disagree with the rest of your statements. But I think even after disregarding an open southern border, the US is still relatively open.

> not foreigners in general.

By requesting their social network identity, right. That's being conscious.

> propaganda against American values like freedom, democracy, and basic human rights, on American soil.

Well... someone skipped reading the news for the past 3 years. The best propaganda against these values comes from your very current president and administration.

> Well... someone skipped reading the news for the past 3 years

Which didn't do a good job of informing the public.

The argument is dishonest, because policies related to surveillance were implemented by all governments of the last decade. On the contrary, this lead to many, many people to say "fuck it", let us just take this madness to the next level and see what happens.

Had the current president not won, we would certainly have increased efforts in the war on terror. The US even created a complete new agency for checking travelers. That has been the strategy for both parties for quite some time, at least a decade now.

>The argument is dishonest, because policies related to surveillance were implemented by all governments of the last decade

This is technically correct but I'd like to point out it easily rounds to two decades. Most of the surveillance state stuff ramped up after 9/11 which was almost 20yr ago.

I'm not saying it didn't start long ago.

Not saying Democrats are clean either - however, in this instance, last time I checked history books, Reagan/Bush & Republicans mostly inherit the chaos they unleashed by their interventions in Middle East in the past 30 years.

Had the current president not won... who cares? He _is_ there today. And he _is_ _breaking_ the country that elected him as well as _all the alliances this country built in the past century.

The apathy is real.

If you are implying Donald Trump is my president, that is incorrect. It's dangerous to make assumptions when you are not keeping a level head.

If requesting social network identity is not being more conscious, what is it? It is not a blanket ban. For all we know, social network identity is just more information for making a more informed decision on the visa application.

Right. With this logic, in a few years, we will all travel naked and not be allowed to cross a border without an all-orifices probe.

"First they ..."

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