The whole idea of looking at people's social media for undesirable political views is contrary to the spirit of the first amendment. It's fine for private universities to vet their incoming students, but government shouldn't be doing that at all.
Americans believe we're exceptional. The mere idea of copying Europe is dead in the water before you can explain why it's a good idea.
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing after we've tried everything else.
This attitude and culture will probably be the downfall of the USA.
Trump personifies this view and takes it to extremes, he basically talks as if whatever he says is all that matters and nothing else is important.
Going to learn the hard way, that's for sure.
I'm a British national. When I left the UK in 2018, people were still talking about Dunkirk like it was a British victory rather than a rolling defeat whose only (even then partially) successful component was the final evacuation; about WW2 like it was a simple victory rather than a Pyrrhic victory; and about the Empire like the end of it was the UK's choice.
I don't share your positive outlook. There's at least two other likely scenario's:
- a large part of the country might not learn at all
- the only lessons being learned are about how to stay in power
Scrutinizing belifs generally don't lead to anything but misery for everyone involved. This is very different from scrutinize crime that has happened.
The only grey area is the role of secret police. Some people, possible a majority, do want the government to scrutinize belifs and political views in order to determen risk. I am less sure, but I also know that human rights and protected classes has less protection against risk assessments conducted by the secret police.
1) The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights [0] which was written by the United Nations (with Eleanor Roosevelt as the committee chair). As a Declaration, the document itself has no legal weight, and the US has only ratified three out of nine core treaties that are based on it. One of them is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [1], which does seem applicable here. Before rejoicing however, consider that the other two treaties that the US has ratified are the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination [2] and the United Nations Convention Against Torture [3] -- so don't expect any miracles here.
[0] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICCPR
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICERD
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNCAT
For reference, ACLU fact sheet from 2013 about the US' track record on human rights: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/121013-human... (PDF)
2) The European Convention on Human Rights [4], which is both a document and a court where human rights violations can be tried. Its jurisdiction is all members of the Council of Europe [5], which is broader than just the European Union (even Russia used to be a member, but was kicked out after the invasion of Ukraine). The EU requires all members to ratify the ECHR as one of the conditions of membership.
[4] https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-convention/
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_europe
For reference, the text itself: https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/Convention_ENG (PDF)
3) The EU itself has a Charter of Fundamental Rights [6] which covers the same topics. From what I could find, the main reason for the name change is that the EU fundamental rights are broader than the international human rights, so this avoids confusion when discussing either in international contexts.
[6] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM...
For reference, explore the Charter: https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/title/title-i-dignity
Yeah, I keep hearing people say this kind of thing, or that the first amendment only protects US citizens. But ... where does that come from?
I thought SCOTUS was supposed to have been jammed with conservative "textualist" justices, and the amendment states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Nowhere does this mention citizenship. Nowhere does it say it can regulate speech outside or at our borders.
Now, from just the text I could imagine someone trying to claim that the Executive is not bound by the first amendment which specifically says "Congress shall make no law" ...
A couple of places to start are Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972) and United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990).
(Just to make sure we're all aware of the facts, here's information from the State Department that the nature of "catch and revoke" social media screening is to target this issue: https://www.axios.com/2025/03/06/state-department-ai-revoke-...)
Israel is strategically advantageous for the US and the rest of the West. Having a Western strong arm in the middle east is the goal geopolitically. Nobody actually cares about Jews or really thinks they're entitled to that land. We just really, really want that land because of course we do.
If the US only cared about power-projection in that area, Cyprus would also be an easy option (like the UK does with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrotiri_and_Dhekelia), as would Turkey (a NATO member), and these days they could probably have an easy time working with Egypt.
Sure, Israel has a lot of stuff going for it (nukes that won't necessarily be blamed on the USA; MOSAD is infamous; etc.), but counting on them alone is an all-eggs-in-one-basket strategy that comes with risks.
Least nobody forget the twitter files where it was revealed the Trump administration was ordering twitter to take down tweets.
This whole policy is dumber than conventional security theater.
But then again, that's the point of this policy. It has the thinnest veneer of being for a legitimate purpose while hurting those that this administration wants to hurt.
Every social-media background check I've seen searches extant and archived media.
That is the goal of the policy.
> What threats will actually be caught by this approach?
Catching threats is not the goal.
I guarantee that you cannot imagine the course of American history if every foreign national was vetted for dissident works. Losing WWII would have only been the tip of the iceberg.
Congress shall pass no law — but executive branch under Trump does whatever it wants regardless of laws anyway…
Read textually, it covers “the people...of the United States" [1][2].
The courts have interpreted this to mean people physically within the United States, with some ambiguity at the borders.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/preamble/
[2] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/
Also, going through social account history is not only for reasons of oppressing freedom of speech. Presumably you might want to reject visa applications from someone who threatens others with murder
That's how the law works in the US, due to the textualist nature of our jurisprudence.
Sort of [1]. (“We the people” has specific case law.)
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/pre-3/ALDE_00...
A citizen of another country is not allowed to open carry at the border just because they showed up, for example. Similarly, there is no universal right to get a student visa.
The US borders aren't a constitution free zone. It's a region where you can search people, not anything else.
A better way to put it is that even if the 1st amendment doesn't apply, it's still against the ideal of "free speech"
Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135 (1945)
> freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.
Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982)
> constitutional protections extend to “all persons” within the U.S, including undocumented immigrants.
Note: US Embassies, where interviews are often conducted, are still considered US soil subject to US laws (otherwise the latest declaration from Trump pausing them would not apply to them)
I don't think that's how it works. The US visa application requests significant amount of personal information, and this is supposedly cross-checked with the US databases/intelligence agencies.
So I doubt they sit down with you going over all your posts on hackernews, but rather ask what you use and your usernames and cross reference that with lists of people interested in ISIS telegram groups.
I would be uncomfortable giving that data myself, but i was uncomfortable writing a lot other things in my visa application, and never thought anyone is forcing me to visit the US
It’s why in the past tourists could expect due process under the law, and not be disappeared out of the blue, etc.
So if the US is rewriting that social contract, they should probably explicitly say what provisions only protect US citizens and which apply to everyone. Because otherwise, is it none?
There is specific distinction between citizens and persons.
Habeas Corpus applies to persons. But there is no right that applies to every person in the world that would give them a right to get a student visa to a US university.
Some Supreme Court decisions—
Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135 (1945)
> freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.
Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982)
> constitutional protections extend to “all persons” within the U.S, including undocumented immigrants.
It is none, and that predates Trump.
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...
> No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
> No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
"it applied to all residents of the US…"
Slaves? Native Americans?
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/a...
In regards to slaves or Native Americans - again it depended on the states' laws. Hence the entire reason why the 14th Amendment was passed.
The fact that they only called out the requirement of citizenship for office should make it pretty clear they intended the rest of the constitution was universal.
Then we agree; it very much includes the concept of citizenship.
If this is what you are defending than we couldn't disagree more.
It does clearly imply a difference between "natural-born" citizens and naturalized ones, and that citizens and residents/people/persons aren't the exact same thing.
The choice to use "citizen" in some spots and "person" in many others seems very deliberate.
You say that without having seen the screening criteria.
I mean, when China bars renowned scholars from entering its borders because of what they might say, we judge it pretty straightforwardly.
That said, the right to free speech does not mean you are free from consequences from that speech. If you're hoping to gain access to a country, it would be wise to refrain from criticizing that country. Yes, views can change and maybe you talked negatively before realizing you wanted to visit the offended country. Not sure what to say to that.
No, it's not. The First Amendment is a legal provision restricting what the U.S. government can do. Free speech, as a principle, is a broader construct. Some people believe it's a natural right [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights_and_legal_right...
say something bad about israel, and you lose entry to the US, if you're poor
I agree with you that this violates the spirit of the first amendment as it is currently interpreted and portrayed, but how do we square that with this interpretation producing results that are squarely at odds with the intent of the founders? Pornography being protected by the first amendment is another example that is pretty straightforwardly against the original spirit.
If this is actually about anti-Israel sentiment being policed though then I’m just confused generally. If the views in question aren’t “destroy America” or “revolution in America”, both of which should be left to US voters and not foreign agitators, I don’t think that is really any of the US government’s business.
> In the eighteenth century, bookstores in the American colonies carried an extraordinary array of erotica, ranging from Boccaccio’s Decameron to such explicitly sexual works as Venus in the Cloister, The Politick Whore, and Letters of an Italian Nun and an English Gentleman, and there were no statutes forbidding obscenity during the entire colonial era. To the contrary, throughout this period, the distribution, exhibition, and possession of pornographic material was simply not thought to be any of the state’s business.
> The first obscenity prosecution in the United States did not occur until 1815, at the height of the evangelical explosion of the Second Great Awakening, which triggered a nationwide effort to transform American law and politics through the lens of evangelical Christianity.
Benjamin Franklin would've loved Pornhub.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_to_a_Friend_on_Choosing...
They were right about the first amendment but were wrong about a bunch of other things.
Don’t forget that the first amendment isn’t the only amendment. America didn’t even achieve equitable civil rights until the last half decade or so. Within living memory women weren’t allowed to get bank accounts without spousal consent.
This idea that we should go back to the original ideas thought up before industrialized society was invented is super weird.
By not pretending we can read the minds of the dead, not letting racist rapists dictate our society from beyond the grave and enforcing the law as written and as interpreted by the courts. This idea that the founding fathers are the sole source of truth is not only dangerously destructive, it's explicitly denied by the constitution itself. This doesn't violate the spirit of the first amendment as currently interpreted, it violates the first amendment.
What makes you think that? Slave-owning aside they were a pretty outward-looking, foreign-fashion-following, elitist bunch.
Is there any example of colonial or early federal period governmental actions demanding that anyone make a record of all of their correspondence available for review to determine whether they had anti-American views? Even at the level of senate confirmations, did the standard of "we should be able to check that you never wrote anything which we view as unacceptable" ever turn up? Bear in mind that for years after the fight for independence, many of them lived in communities where they knew and interacted with former British loyalists, so this wasn't an idle concern.
I think a bunch of them were on record making very broad statements in defense of personal liberties, and a bunch of them had been accused by the crown of being treasonous based on stuff they had written, so one could understand them being _not_ on the same page of creating punishments for categories of speech.
> Pornography being protected by the first amendment is another example that is pretty straightforwardly against the original spirit.
Is it? My understanding is anti-obscenity laws at the federal level in the US really go back to the Comstock act in the 1870s, i.e. the founders and multiple generations after them didn't attempt to ban porn. I think it's entirely consistent to believe that the founders didn't imagine that a government had any business making such stipulations.
By "foreigner" do you include Native Americans? From what I gather, Harvard, Dartmouth, and other colonial era colleges nominally encouraged educating Native Americans, as part of their Christianization. There wasn't much of it, to be fair, but it was a stated goal. There were also schools like Moor's Indian Charity School.
By "foreigner" do you include the Black population? We know there were schools for black children, like the Williamsburg Bray School. From what little I know of slaveholder Madison, I don't think he was against free blacks getting an education.
Could you point to anything specific from Madison on this topic?
Jesus christ. Don't you feel at all obligated to provide support for the thing you're "pretty sure" about before asking people to accept it at face value? Based on your surety? It's hard to tell if this is basic rage-baiting with the absurdity of your claim sans support, or if you truly believe that wild claims don't require any, because enough people's reactionary vibes align with yours.