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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

It seems like 90% of the comments here didn't read the article and think it has to do with section 230, which Twitter is also in the news for right now.

Regardless of how you feel about their moderation policies, if you care about free speech you should at least be on their side with this one. Requesting social media handles from visa applicants does chill speech. As a visa holder, I've thought long and hard over whether I should post political comments or photos from protests on social media. If you truly care about free speech, be consistent and care about that too.

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It doesn't only chill speech, it indicates that a decision about whether to let the person into the country will be based on their speech. Speech isn't "free" if the government is going to punish you for it.

As I understand it, the free speech guarantee in the US only applies to their citizens, doesn't it?

edit: I was wrong, it mostly applies to everyone [0]

[0] https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

No. The First Amendment applies to everyone. It applies to American law on American soil, on foreign soil, to citizens, and to non-citizens. There are some exceptions, particularly for illegal immigrants, but in general foreign nationals have the same Constitutional rights as American citizens.

It's not even hard to find legal scholar opinions stating such:

https://victormalcalaw.com/do-non-citizens-have-constitution...

https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/t-he-constitutional-rights...

Guantanamo Bay being a violation of due process and habeus corpus is one of the big problems with it. The problem is that it's excruciatingly difficult to have standing and jurisdiction in these cases, which is one of the ways the government skirts accountability.

Edit: I replied before your edit; I will leave this comment as-is, however.

Given some forms of speech are illegal and the government would have an interest in preventing people engaging in those forms of speech, why would denying someone based on their speech be a negative thing? I've seen a few people try to argue around this by saying the specific types of speech that are illegal (and which most everyone agree should be illegal) don't actually count as speech, but that feels like playing semantics.

There is a concern that government will make their judgments based on something other than illegal speech, but that is a larger concern with the government in general and selective enforcement of laws. Consider the guy who was publishing 3d weapon designs. Officially he wasn't punished for his speech but for other crimes (which just so happens to be one of the few strict liability crimes so the government doesn't have to prove mens rea), but he was given special focus that appears to have been because of his legal speech. Selective enforcement of laws already leads to a chilling effect on speech that is a much larger concern as it impacts all citizens, residents, immigrants, and potentials thereof, not just visa applicants.

There's plenty of things that are illegal, but that we don't collect the maximum amount of evidence at the border to detect.

For example rape is illegal, and collecting DNA samples at the border might deter or detect rapists. Some drugs are illegal, and hair sample drug tests might deter or detect drug users. Money laundering is illegal, and requiring online banking credentials be handed over might deter or detect money launderers.

As it's at the border, there would be no constitutional concerns.

And yet we don't do these things - why do you think that is?

Cost and backlog. Take DNA, we aren't even able to work through the existing backlog of DNA collected specifically surrounding allegations of crimes. For many crimes that aren't at the level of seriousness of murder we don't even collect DNA from a crime scene.

>Money laundering is illegal, and requiring online banking credentials be handed over would deter money launderers.

We do far more than that to stop money laundering and not merely at the border.

To say nothing of the many other types of searches we already perform at the border.

> As a visa holder, I've thought long and hard over whether I should post political comments or photos from protests on social media.

You should consider using Tor. It was first and foremost designed for this very purpose.

Using Tor doesn't really change much.

You are still left with a choice:

a - give up your details when required to do so by the government.

b - lie on a government form and/or to a government official

If you choose b, then at any point in the future it's discovered that you did lie, then this can make life very very difficult. Not only can your Visa be cancelled, it can mean you're never again able to visit the US. It means uprooting your entire life to return to the country you were born in.

There's been plenty of stories, some posted here, where this has happened to someone who either through a mistake, or even no fault of their own - has ended up in hot water and their Visa withdrawn.

Using Tor and successfully remaining truly anonymous are non-trivial things, and endangering your livelihood and ability to remain in the US is a large risk.

This ignores the genuine possibility of prosecution for making false statements and/or lying to a government official.

Twitter does not work on Tor unless you also give them your phone number, making the exercise pointless.

At the point your threat model includes nation states of note — in my opinion, any recommendation of Tor should acknowledge why Tor would not increase threats instead of reducing them.

> designed for this very purpose

... by the US Navy.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-TOR-browser-was-ac...

>As a visa holder, I've thought long and hard over whether I should post political comments or photos from protests on social media.

If you're a visa holder, you should refrain from taking political action in the country you're staying. The US is pretty lenient on this matter, but the majority of countries are much more strict.

As a visa holder you should generally respect the laws of your host country. To the extent that the laws of your host allow you to participate in political action you should feel entirely free to. In the case of the US I'm 95% certain that the laws allow you to engage in political speech.

Obviously you should not misrepresent yourself as a citizen of the host country, but that's just part of the general "lying is bad" moral prohibition.

While this is a good thought, and in theory you should be correct, it is just not really how it works (I can only speak for my experiences with the US, and with TN work status). The majority of US citizens do not understand the visa/status/immigration process. Many people seem to think that there is a list of checkboxes, and if you hit them, you can get your visa/status. In practice it does not always work that way.

The individual officer (wither USCIS or CBP) has, for the most part, full discretion each time you want to enter the US. It does not matter if you have a visa, and it does not matter if you have been admitted with the same documentation 5 times in the past. As well, the reason for your denial does not really have to be provided in a clear fashion, and there is not much of an appeal mechanism. If you were to post an opinion critical of a given administration, or a given action, and your adjudicating officer sees it and disagrees with you, there is really nothing stopping them from denying you entry based on your personal opinion.

So yes:

- it is perfectly within my rights to make a twitter post that I disagree with something.

- I should feel comfortable doing that without fear that it will be used it against me

- I do not.

I discovered this with green card as well, one of the conditions to keep it is to not have permanent residence abroad. What this means is completely up to the border agent talking to you on arrival. There have been grandmas that have been away for 20 year that were fine, and there have been people coming back after 3 months that were in trouble. I once came back a month after last time and was almost denied. Border controls are just very arbitrary, and it is up to the mood of the agent.

A border agent alone cannot rescind a green card (although there have been cases where they've tricked non-native English speakers into signing forms that do rescind them: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/30/trump-travel...). At worst they can let you in but send your case to an immigration judge who might. But the judge is an expert in the law in a way the border agent is not.

True, but you cannot leave the court while waiting for the court case which is usually months and having this come up as a possibility is a terrifying thing.

The problem is that it really matters the mood of that border agents. I have probably entered the us more than 20 times, and that one bad experience left me feeling super helpless.

> you should not misrepresent yourself as a citizen of the host country, but that's just part of the general "lying is bad" moral prohibition

There is actually a specific question of this nature on the application for US citizenship. So, it's more than just moral prohibition, it could result in a rejection of citizenship.

They also asked me about this during my in-person citizenship interview.

Reddit has bugging me relentlessly to add an email address to my account for the past year. Sometimes, the banner can't even be dismissed. I'm not sure if it's related to this case or just general tracking and list building, or maybe even actual account security as they suggest.

It feels a bit weird to engage in politics in a country you are not a citizen of, though. It's good that it's allowed and it shouln't be impeded but it feels a bit like when you go to a friend's house and tell them how they should educate their children differently.

>As a visa holder you should generally respect the laws of your host country.

... and terms of your visa.

>To the extent that the laws of your host allow you to participate in political action you should feel entirely free to.

You are taking a risk that a citizen of that country does not. If a citizen gets arrested as part of riot/protest control, they'll get released in a short amount of time. You, as a visa-holder, may get your visa revoked, lose your job and get deported. You may have issues with visa renewal or reentry (because typically visa terms allow for arbitrary revocation and lots of discretion is given to border agents and issuing officer). But it's your life. Take any risk you want.

> ... and terms of your visa.

Of course, those are part of the law

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