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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

> so they don't have the same set of rights that citizens do, nor should they

I take issue with the "nor should they" aspect of what you said. While I'm aware it's not a binding document, the United States [1] claims that these rights should be inalienable. This, to me, would imply that these rights should apply to everyone.

Obviously this gets into more nebulous territory if the person isn't within the states, but I still fundamentally think the right to free speech should apply.

EDIT: [1] Declaration of Independence.

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My wife has a pending green card application. I'm sympathetic to would-be immigrants, but...

The Declaration of Independence declares it self-evident that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the purpose of governments is to secure these rights, subject to the consent of the governed.

Unless I'm misreading it, the Declaration of Independence doesn't directly mention freedom of speech.

Also, presumably these tools are being used to prioritize applicants based on a benefit/risk assessment. If the purpose isn't to deny entry as a form of punishment, then freedom of speech presumably wouldn't come into the picture. Intent matters. Prioritization isn't necessarily punishment.

Freedom of speech would squarely fall within the “liberty” clause of that declaration.

Agreed. Thank you.

"Pursuit of Happiness" might also apply to immigration to the US and in some cases so would the "Life" clause.

I hate this kind of reasoning. It comes up a lot

“My wife is a would-be immigrant so I am sympathetic”

Or sometimes

“My partner is half X So I understand discrimination against X”

Or even sometimes

“I am in category Y so there’s no way I can hate people in category Y”

I don’t think that line of reasoning makes sense. People often times carve out mental exemptions for people close to them that they care about, not for everyone in the same category. Further more, it is totally possible to love a person but not every quality about them. Also just because you are close to someone doesn’t mean you understand entirely their struggles

What would you call this? Inverse ad hominem?

I intentionally didn't draw a causative link between my wife being a would-be immigrant and my being sympathetic. It's supporting evidence, not a causal relation.

It's possible that you're often similarly misreading statements from others as implying causality. It's absolutely faulty logic to say I have relationship X to Y so I can't be Y. However, P(Not against Y | my relationship X to Y) > P(Not against Y) may certainly be valid reasoning.

I certainly can't think of any Y where I'd take a tonights-bar-tab bar bet against the statement that people married to Y are more sympathetic on average toward Y than the average person.

It's preemptive defense against inevitable knee-jerk "you're anti-immigrant" ad hominem attacks. I wish I didn't feel the need to preempt such diversions, but that's the world in which we live.

Yeah as a gay dude I see this frequently in peeps "I used to hate gays until I found out my daughter was a lesbian". Sure it's nice for people to realise they were wrong, but it would sure be swell to skip all of the hate in between, for everyone involved.

I feel like the rights set forth in the Declaration of Independence are not really what this is all about. The US isn't saying you can't write derogatory things about it online, so it's not denying any rights. But non-citizens don't automatically have a right to enter the country, correct?

spot on: the right to enter a countries borders is not granted to all individuals. The right to free speech may be, but it comes with a cost if you say things people don't like. You are still free to say them though.

Free speech is granted to the people. So probably not. Note right to bear arms is granted to 'people' therefore by deduction if you are barred arms you are not a person. Aliens are not typically considered 'people' in a constitutional context.

> "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"

is semantically different from

> "The right of each person to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".

A group can have a right in the general sense that is restricted from individuals in that group. Note that this is a different construct than is used in the First Amendment (and I have a hard time believing that the framers took their semantic decisions in drafting these phrases lightly):

> "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"

DC v Heller makes clear the present day interpretation of the people conveys individual right. People is also said in the fourth amendment, surely you're not arguing individuals have no fourth amendment rights.

In the first I'm specifically referring that it says the right is to the people to petition grievances. The wording pretty clearly doesn't prohibit congress from stopping non-people from assembling/petitioning.

If you can't have a gun you are necessarily not a person based on the present day interpretation of the courts. Therefore most aliens are not people and law can prohibit their grievances (derogatory posts perhaps) and assembly and abridge their protection from search and seizure.

Note:

>> "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"

Lol you purposefully chopped off the part where some of that was explicitly qualified to 'people' rather than to anyone!

> Lol you purposefully chopped off the part where some of that was explicitly qualified to 'people' rather than to anyone!

You mean the bit after the clause I cited, which applies to a different thing than the freedom of speech?

My objection, to be clear, is your insistence on bending over backwards to justify the assertion that the denial of one right necessarily implies the denial of other rights based on a strange inversion of the idea of "personhood".

My assertion is people are people. If the Constitution says the right is to people then people have the rights if people. If you have no right to bear arms you're not a person and the first contrary to your claim does explicitly tailer congresses limitations on assembly and petitioning to 'people' just as the second tailers to people.

If authorities and those with power will apply a "cost" to you for doing an action, you do not have freedom to do that action. This is what freedom means.

Otherwise, what does it mean to you? Is your view that simply being physically capable of doing something means you're 'free' to do it?

Do you think people in North Korea have freedom of speech? After all, they can say whatever they like. It just comes with a cost (life in a labor camp).

Every possible human action has some cost. By that standard, 'free speech' has never existed and never will.

Which seems a bit silly, most people understand it to mean 'free' above a certain underlying threshold.

I dont think it's about threshold. It's about some consequences being ok to apply and some not being ok. But some of the ok ones may actually be bigger than some of the not-ok ones. For instance the love of your life breaking up with you. That's big. But ok. Or a $20 fine. That's small. But not ok.

A $20 fine for speech in a restricted area seems to be fine?

e.g. swear words in a kindergarten

>Every possible human action has some cost.

Every possible human action does not have a punishment or a deterrent applied by those with power.

Freedom to do X means there's no punishment for doing X.

> Every possible human action does not have a punishment or a deterrent applied by those with power.

Since every living member of society has some non-zero amount, it would still be the case that free speech is practically impossible, if you set the bar too low. As the chances of that applying to at least 1 person out of 8 billion is pretty close to 100%.

So then the question is, how high exactly is the bar above zero?

I don't know. This feels really easy to abuse. Like, say I wrote something criticizing China on some issue on facebook, and then China denies a future visitor visa. Is that right? Is that reasonable? Is that good for China?

Likewise, I expect that it is not in the USA's best interest to do this, let alone fair to the person who would immigrate into the the US.

This is exactly what China does today. How is it not in a country's best interest to deny a visa to aliens that hate the country?

> How is it not in a country's best interest to deny a visa to aliens that hate the country?

Is this meant as a straw man?

When does criticism become hate, and how to do you judge speech anyways. Reminds me of that guy in Hong Kong who was given a huge fine and banned from trading in the HKSAR because he said Evergrande would go insolvent. Obviously a hate crime.

But if the "non-citizens don't automatically have a right to enter the country" logic holds up, then what rules should be used to allow or deny entry?

Would it be okay to deny entry to a foreigner because they're black? Or gay? They don't have a right to enter anyways, so I guess it's okay.

This is really about "how does the negative things they say about the US affect how they'll improve the US by being there, if at all" which is really the general rule for most immigration; how can this person help and improve the country they're entering.

As much as I'd like these rights to apply to me, inalienable means they can't be taken away, not that they apply to aliens, terrestrial or otherwise.

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

I'm not religious, so I don't believe in a "creator" in the most literal sense, but doesn't this imply that (from the government's perspective) that these rights were given by God, and cannot be taken away by a government?

Again, I'm aware that the declaration is not a legally binding document, but I feel like it symbolizes the ideals of what the US was supposed to be.

perhaps it means that "some aspects of (human) life on Earth are recognized as fundamental -- by definition they are beyond politics, and beyond any current versions of laws in any written human language" so .. the US Constitution is saying explicitly (using words including diety) .. we recognize that human law is not enough to fairly and completely spell out rights .. therefore these OTHER rights are "inalienable"

Where in the Declaration does it state that entering the US is an inalienable right? I'm confused.

It doesn't, but I took the "liberty" part to include "free speech", and I'm arguing that by using critical speech as a means to deny a visa, that's effectively the government taking away a right.

I'm not a lawyer or a political philosopher or an ethicist, I'm just a mediocre software engineer, so I will acknowledge that I'm speaking out of my ass on this; I'm just a guy who has read a few books and has a frustrating adherence to my principles.

You cannot take away a right to enter the US from somebody who does not have it in the first place. Only citizens and permanent residents have such a right. Even people given a visa do not have this right, they still can be turned away at the border without any of their rights infringed.

This is no different, for example, from applying for a research grant and getting denied on the basis of the application. The government examined your speech in the application and decided not to give you money, is this a free speech suppression?

"life" could apply to immigration, "liberty" should apply to immigration, and "pursuit of happiness" should apply to immigration.

That's just kicking the can down the road, because the full sentence is:

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Which would seem to be irrespective of nationality. I think that today, we understand that "men" was meant as a generic term for "person", but the rest of that sentence seems to say that everybody who is a creation of God (which is understood to be everybody) has those unalienable rights. It sure reads to me like it says "everyone on Earth has these rights" not just "people in these colonies have these rights".

I am trolling a little bit here, since I don't actually believe we (the U.S.) should insist on our Constitutional protections applying to non-citizens. But that is what it says to me.

The person who upheld the self-evidence of those truths also asserted his property rights over other humans, so I don't think we can draw meaningful conclusions as to whom he intended to apply his terminology.

Men/man has always originated from a general term for humans. See "Herman" and "Wifman".

You know what's interesting about the Declaration of Independence?

It's superseded by The Constitution, the actual foundation for all American laws.

It's a nice thing Americans are proud of, but for example, The Supreme Court can't cite in a ruling, unless it's also in-line with The Constitution.

That's why I specifically mentioned it's not binding, and I agree that if it were directly cited as a source in a court case, that would probably be bad.

That said, I think it's perfectly useful to demonstrate the possible intent of the founders. Even if you can't directly cite a law out of it, it can still be useful as a tool to figure out what the founders were going for.

The US was pretty clear in the Constitution that non citizens are not entitled to those rights. The same people also wrote the Constitution.

To note, it's actually used several times in the past in order to clarify components of the Constitution and other laws.

Disclaimer: Not a legal expert.

Ex: Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U.S. 495 (1976)

The Plaintiffs argued that they were denied Social Security benefits because they were "illegitimate" children of their father even though the plaintiffs were able to prove that they were related.

The court held that among other reasons, because as defined in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal", that there was no differentiation between a "legitimate" child and an "illegitimate" child in the eyes of the government.

There's a few other cases, but that's one that I've studied the most.

Yes, but as you rightly point out, it's used to decide what the founders were going for specifically as it relates to interpretations of The Constitution.

The first 7 words of The Constitution are “We the People of The United States.” Later in the same paragraph they specifically state that they are doing that for “ourselves and our posterity”

There is no ambiguity that the framers were creating rights and laws for “People of the United States”

Yes, but what the founders were going for specifically as it relates to interpretations of The Constitution

The first 7 words of The Constitution are “We the People of The United States.” Later in the same paragraph they specifically state that they are doing that for “ourselves and our posterity”

There is no ambiguity that the framers were creating rights and laws for “People of the United States”

> unless it's also in-line with The Constitution.

The Supreme Court is itself the sole arbiter of this exception, so in practice they can cite it whenever they want to. The Federalist Papers are cited in a number of supreme court rulings. While one could argue that they are equally relevant to the Declaration, it would be hard to argue that they are less relevant.

No, that nebulous territory is exactly the issue, let's not duck it: should the U.S. impose its view on people who aren't citizens or not? Lately we've been edging toward the side of "no, that's bad to do," but if the answer is yes, maybe we should be reaching out to other countries and telling them what rights they have.

> should the U.S. impose it's view on people who aren't citizens?

> maybe we should be reaching out to other countries and telling them what rights they have.

I don't think it is a matter of telling "other countries" what rights they have or impose the U.S.'s view on people who aren't citizens but of consistently exercising human rights within U.S. jurisdiction (which includes visa applications).

You don't have to go as far as to bring up moral relativism. As it currently stands, the US Constitution is interpreted as a series of bounds placed upon the US government when it interacts with citizens. We don't have to demand that every country respect exactly those sets of bounds, we just have to restrain immigration enforcement from engaging in what would otherwise be a fairly open-and-shut case of retribution for constitutionally protected speech.

The DoI says that some rights(life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) are inalienable and endowed by the creator, not that all rights are.

But the right to free speech isn't impacted.

It's "right of entry/movement" that is impacted, and that along with a few others (voting) isn't extended to non-citizens at all.

While the United States is certainly big enough to ignore a few insults, some derogatory statements might imply a willingness to do the country or its people harm.

The US government isn't preventing anyone, especially non-citizens living in other countries, from exercising their free speech. We are also free to read your free speech, and deny you entry to our country because of what you said about our country.

What you are talking about here, is that we as a people, have no right to listen to what you say and make decisions based on that. What you are saying is that if there's a guy outside your house yelling that you're an evil bad person who should rot in hell, you obligated to ignore his words in your decision to open your door and invite him in, because he has a right to say anything he wants. Do you... Do you get robbed a lot? If you do, you should observe the world around you, and make decisions based on those observations. This will greatly help you not get robbed a lot.

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