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Comment by jlebar | Hacker News Reader

Who gets to define what is anti-American?

Perhaps you think it's anti-American to believe that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza. Perhaps I think it's anti-American to believe that the Jan 6 rioters should have been pardoned.

Whose purity test should we apply?

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We're talking about foreigners: if you are a guest in someone's country, home, wherever, you should be respectful and quiet.

I don't want any foreigners contributing to any political activism whatsoever, regardless of ideology.

I'd certainly expect visitors to be held to the same standards as the natives. This is the problem, as a US citizen I don't want to be respectful and quiet, especially when I disagree with my government.

> I'd certainly expect visitors to be held to the same standards as the natives.

Visitors are held to a higher standard than natives. Visitors do not have control, a vote, etc: they are temporarily permitted by the privilege of policy at the time.

> as a US citizen I don't want to be respectful and quiet, especially when I disagree with my government.

Good, don't be! You're not at risk of having a visa revoked or go unissued.

Telling the US government it's broken is a favor to the US government. Freedom of speech is a gift to both the people of this country and the institution itself, helping it be pure and accountable. It's the force that prevents us from becoming like China.

Those who seek to stop that regulating force are undermining what makes America great. Where those voices of dissent were born isn't pertinent.

This is naive, it's clear that someone without a stake in a country could just be an agent provocateur.

This is akin to the fallacy of saying that the accountability of "real name" policies on web forums make higher quality comments, and then you actually look at the contents of Faceboot. I mean, actual US citizens just voted this tiny-minded failure of a "president" in for the second time, because apparently he hadn't damaged the country enough the first time. Having a stake didn't help there, right? Either people are unaware they are harming themselves (stupidity/anti-intellectualism), don't care because others are getting harmed "more" (spite), or are in social media bubbles pushed by hostile actors (agent provocateurs don't actually need physical presence).

I feel like this is a ridiculous bad-faith argument. You know damned well that banning people from the country for having a JD vance meme on their phone is not stopping international agents. Arguing by presently demonstrably false hypotheticals as though they were reality makes me think it's a waste of everybody's breath talking to you.

It would be a stupid position. I was failing to explain that not all rights like the freedom of speech necessarily make sense to apply to foreigners who are given the privilege to enter the country. I am not necessarily firm in this position the other poster made an argument that they can speak because what does it matter which is a good point.

Why do you allow then foreign lobby groups?

Or why did you allow Elon to participate in elections, he was a foreigner at some point and he wasn't born in America?

You do you, and we'll have the parties at my house then. Enjoy quietly playing Catan or whatever.

Your extrapolation to the national level is fallacious. Many of our academic institutions were deliberately hosting foreigners, with the explicit goal of being melting pots of ideas. That gave the US an exceptional cultural cachet around the globe. This whole thing is an exercise in attacking and destroying our traditional distributed institutions in favor of centralized autocratic control.

Okay but that's not what this is about. This is saying that a foreigner cannot express private thoughts online at any point before they enter the United States.

I assume someone who goes by "15155" would believe that having private conversations online can be useful. Or do you want to post your identifying information?

The majority of the people's opinion.

Which elected a democratically-elected representative.

That is how democracies work.

If there's anything the executive has power over besides commander in chief, it would be leader in chief of defining what is actually, American.

The fact that prior presidents have actually abdicated this important role, doesn't mean it didn't exist. This is why traditions of the State of the Union, etc exist. The executive gets to call the plays towards unity for Americanism.

This is what foreign countries do as well.

And next time the Democrats get elected they will filter out all the right wing professors/students, and this will make you happy?

discriminating in employment due to one's affiliation is illegal in state and federal employment [1]. That does not mean one can break ToS and for example, publish on a massive public platform, your private opinion (which can be misconstrued as your employer's). Most employers have ToS against online activity during employment, for that reason.

It is also illegal to do the same for students. [2]

Faculty is already protected under tenure rules. And even for the nontenured, who really needs protecting ? Only 5.7% of all faculty are registered as conservative as of 2020 [3]

My point remains. "Filtering out" is illegal. Setting the stage on what is american, is not.

[1] https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/political-aff...

[2] https://www.nysasa.org/index.php/news/6558-schools-cannot-en...

[3] https://www.thecollegefix.com/democratic-professors-outnumbe...

> for the nontenured, who really needs protecting ? Only 5.7% of all faculty are registered as conservative

Plenty of right wingers are granted visas to spread nonsense in America. It would make sense to put them on visa bans.

> next time the Democrats get elected they will filter out all the right wing professors/students, and this will make you happy

Yes, actually. We have the precedent. Both for the action and for these people being dangerous to our safety and civil society.

When it comes to allowing foreighn students to come to US, which from my understanding is a likely path to citizenship, the executive branch gets to decide, which is basically elected by 51% of population every 4 years.

I prefer the exec branch over no purity test, or delegating to some other "expert" institution.

51% of the voting population. Not the majority of the population. Big difference in numbers there, only 65.3% participated. So, less than a third of Americans voted for the current president… why people don’t vote, I’ll never understand.

51% of the electorate is expected given we live in a 2 party political system

i dont care about the opinion of people who dont care to vote

absentee balots for those who cant get to a polling station is pretty reasonable nowadays

That’s not the point and I agree with you. The point was that no where near the majority voted for him since so many didn’t vote at all.

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