U.S. will review social media for foreign student visa applications | Hacker News Reader

U.S. will review social media for foreign student visa applications

npr.org

117 pointsBeetleB200 comments

What blows my mind is that the US gov (of which I am a "citizen") considers my opinions to "pose a threat to U.S. national security".

The idea that they'd like kick me out of my own damn country for thinking what I think about them is worrisome, at best.

If I can only think what I think because I have some special status as a citizen, and "what I think" has been proscribed as illegitimate by the government, it feels a bit chilling.

I spent considerable time in the U.S. on a J visa, so did my partner.

We both agree that we would have not chosen to visit under the current visa regime, and I assume many others agree with our sentiment.

Universities in the US are currently advising students (F or J visa) to not travel out of US to avoid potential challenges at the port of re-entry.

Unfortunately that's the goal. Your call and I respect that, but the current administration doesn't care, they want folks who they determine have the wrong point of view out.

It's not just international students either, in their demand to Harvard the Trump administration demanded Harvard hire an outside group to survey Harvard staff and STUDENTS for "viewpoint diversity" and if they felt the diversity wasn't what the administration wanted, adjust staff and students to fit their view.

> Unfortunately that's the goal. Your call and I respect that, but the current administration doesn't care, they want folks who they determine have the wrong point of view out.

I agree with you, but I also think it would be unfortunate to frame this as somehow the responsibility of those who would be suffering the risk to come here to combat this. As much as I'd love for people to come just to stick it to the current government, I honestly think it's probably a better idea for them to prioritize their own safety and security over trying to fight against it. The rest of the world doesn't owe it to us to fix our mess for us.

Federal anti-wrongthink enforcement. Everything they accused the other political side of doing, but 100x, and actually occurring in reality.

Am I off-base here, or is this exactly what is happening?

This is basically what’s happening.

The left opened the doors of academic and internet censorship and the right went ‘two can play that game!’ And kicked it wide open.

> The left opened the doors of academic and internet censorship

This was almost entirely an astroturfed campaign, which very effectively worked to whip people up into believing that they were being censored.

Whenever it came up in the last few years in online conversations, I would ask "OK, so what are you being censored from saying?" Dozens, maybe a hundred times, of me asking that question, and it was nearly always crickets in response.

What is the evidence of "the left" censoring academia? Whenever I dig into that, it's sloppy science, fringe theories, or straight up crackpots who couldn't get published in a journal, who then found popularity on youtube and podcasts doing the "I am being censored by Big Science" grift.

If anyone would care to educate me on this, with evidence, I am here for it.

> What is the evidence of "the left" censoring academia?

Here's a decent summary of how some of these censorship doors were opened: https://www.acsh.org/news/2024/02/25/covid-censorship-yes-bi...

There are also more vivid and recent examples, like barring universities from divestment from Israel (ie, 0]), which has happened in quite a few 'blue' states. Not to mention sending in armed police (ie, [1]) to break up peaceful anti-genocide protests.

0 - https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-israel-gaza-campus-p...

1 - https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-campus-p...

I guess I must have hallucinated Trump threatening universities for anti genocide protests.

You certainly seem to have hallucinated me saying anything about Trump.

To prevent premature downvotes, preface: this comment is not about the merits or demerits of the censorship, just that it took place. Whether it's good or bad was a different question, but it very much happened. One might say that it wasn't "the left" behind it, but if you'd take approval ratings of this censorship at the time across left/right, the latter would've been strongly opposed with the former mixed at best, if not broadly in favor.

> If anyone would care to educate me on this, with evidence, I am here for it.

Sure, happy to. I'll focus on the "internet" part. There was mass censorship on the major US social media platforms during COVID in the name of "preventing racist attacks against East-Asians". This is widely documented and admitted.

Yishan Wong, ex-Reddit CEO:

> Example: the "lab leak" theory (a controversial theory that is now probably true; I personally believe so) was "censored" at a certain time in the history of the pandemic

That Meta and Twitter banned accounts for discussion of it is easily verifiable, Wikipedia also banned discussion of it.

In Twitter's case, they even had a CCP figure on their board of directors during this time [1][2].

[1] - https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/3940206

[2] - https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/home/2020/5/25/twitters-new...

You’re right, but a large part of the reason many come here is to participate in a strongly left wing idea reinforcement operation. HN skews left and votes in brigades to enforce that.

So many times I’ve opted to not refute things because I know it’ll be downvoted to oblivion, and because the community at large doesn’t care to change their views in the slightest.

It’s good for tech news.

(I'm the person you're replying to, in case you might get confused)

It's very unfortunate that all I received was downvotes, without a single substantial reply as to what would be particularly incorrect about the observations I made. This does indeed seem to stem from infallibility tribalism: "I identify with group A, so literally anything that can be taken as pointing out a flaw of group A is an attack on me as a person".

At the same time, this isn't a particular hallmark of the left; it's even worse on the right. In any right-dominated space, my comment, if the roles were swapped, would simply have been instantly removed rather than just being downvoted. r/conservative is a very prime example. Twitter is another one, having become much more eager to instantly abide by requests from foreign autocratic regimes to remove/ban accounts that oppose them after the Musk takeover.

I do wonder if you're going to downvote me for this comment, reaching a new "irony level" world record :)

It's definitely worse on the left, the group that's constantly inventing new ways to censor and exclude talk, not just action, the right leans far more libertarian in that regard. Most conservatives hate Reddit though so I doubt that's a sample of anything. I don't think X is a good example either, it's far less censor prone under right-leaning leadership than before.

And I'd never downvote something that's not entirely dumb as long as it's written in good faith.

> the right leans far more libertarian in that regard

That is the advertising. Meanwhile, the reality is the the US right is banning books in school libraries, telling people what they can do with their bodies to the point of needless deaths, requiring lie detector tests for hiring in the FBI where the question is "do you harbor any bad feelings about the boss?" The Speaker of the House just stated that "separation of church as state is a myth." I could go on and on.

As a lifelong independent, to me the above disconnection from the advertising and reality is the biggest reason that I can plainly see that pledging allegiance or alignment to any political party leads to the death of one's critical thinking abilities in that space.

I don’t think happening to not fall mostly within left or right makes any of your ideas necessarily more valid, there’s a smart and dumb versions of left, right and center to an extent.

All the things you listed imo are either extremely marginal or not an issue at all, especially compared to the lefts recent antics. Then again, I was pretty left leaning until I lived in SF, which quickly dissuaded me of it, along with the American left moving pretty far leftward. 15 years ago I guess id be considered somewhat left leaning even still.

I believe that categorizing things into left/right is folly.

Talk to me of specific policies. (I mean this in general, not you specifically.)

Everything else is high school football-style fandom (my team vs. your team) used divide and conquer us.

Opened what door?

"If only students didn't complain when Milo Yiannopoulos got invited to campus, the Trump administration wouldn't be kicking out (or imprisoning) international students based on their political beliefs, rejecting papers about gay people from conferences at military academies, and imposing quotas for hiring reactionaries." Is that the claim?

The underlying forces have been at play since the 1970s, with a party policy to eschew bipartisanship and further charged by creating a dedicated party media.

This setup has been constantly improved, to the point that Intelligent Design could successfully be held up along side the theory of evolution in American media - BEFORE the internet made itself felt.

There is an asymmetric media failure at play, and the idea that “both sides” have the same faults, allows this failure to persist, because it drastically downplays the propaganda machine that operates on the right of the content economy.

This is not an opinion, this is an open secret, as the people within the right wing ecosystem may as well be entirely captured. “Network Propaganda” does a better job of making the case, and should be required reading for most tech people interested in the market place of ideas.

You know, it’s ok to call it fascism. I know everyone is having a hard time coping and is still waving their hands wildly to call it something else. And just because the undesirables aren’t all dealt with in the first year doesn’t mean it’s not a fascist takeover. It happens in stages. But that’s what it is. Trump suggested that the federal government take over NYC if Mamdani wins the election. Step by step they’re trying to make it happen. It’s fascism.

Looking at public profiles is one thing… requiring people to switch their profiles to “Public” so they can be looked at seems like another thing. How is that even enforceable? What if they find some profile that happens to have my name and is private, but isn’t mine? To say nothing of the legitimate reasons to have a private profile in the first place. And who defines “hostility?”

It’s hard not to see this as another “freedom of speech (but only for the kind of speech we like)” situation.

Yeah, I wonder how this is checked/enforced as well, it doesn't seem trivial and especially in the time at entry. Is it something they take action over retroactively, after correlating records from multiple companies?

Like everything else the government does they'll take you at your word and scrutinize it later looking for an excuse to screw you if you do anything they don't like.

Does/should one have freedom of speech if they are a non-citizen and not in the US yet? If so, should the US police around the world to ensure that?

Yes, they do. Full stop. The constitution is not ambiguous about this, at all. The Bill of Rights starts, right out of the gates with:

"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. "

Note the wording. It's not in the business of granting rights (those are natural and inalienable). It restricts Congress's ability to pass any law that infringes upon those rights.

I like this take.

You don’t have a right to a US visa. You can choose not to comply with the request.

The issue is retaliating against free speech using the visa process. A person doesn’t have a right to a visa but they have right to free speech. Using the visa process to retaliate against free speech violates a foundational principle of our government the human right to free speech.

No, it only means that you enjoy your free speech back home. No rights are being violated or suppressed. You’ll find this to be true in every free country.

Actually most democracies extend freedom of expression to everyone including immigrants.

Withholding a visa by a government due to political statements is retaliation and retaliation is a method of suppressing someone’s free speech.

The violation of the constitution here is based on the fact that the government of the United States does not have the right to restrict free speech. The 1st Amendment very actively strips them of that power.

To play devil’s advocate, this has more to do with the concept of sovereignty. A country can choose who gets to enter its borders. We may or may not agree with the rules they impose but they can set them. The constitution only applies to people that are already on US land.

The constitution mostly applies to the government, carefully laying out what they can or can't do. And they tend to be on American soil.

The devil has enough advocates.

The rights of non-citizens outside the US are not well protected by the constitution.

There was case a while back where a border patrol agent in Texas shot a person in Mexico. No ability sue.

The constitution only restricts the government (some exceptions), and is therefore unusually silent in where the government isn’t the government.

This is unfortunate, because the US government absolutely operates in foreign countries.

Mesa v Hernandez was not decided based on the idea that people outside the US have zero rights in US courts. It was decided based on the insane principle of qualified immunity being applied to law enforcement when they violate somebody's rights in a way that is not absolutely completely identical to some prior case where a court determined that the action violates rights.

It is an insane case, but for different reasons.

This strikes me as a false dichotomy. There is a solar-system-sized gap between "my country should not impose speech restrictions on foreign visitors" and "my country should police every other country to ensure that they do not impose speech restrictions upon their own citizens within their borders". Was anybody seriously proposing that?

I was only asking questions.

this is such a trope at this point that it has its own wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Asking_Questions

Thanks for the criticism. In this case, what do you see as the "false or distorted claims by framing them as questions" that I was making?

Probably: > a false dichotomy

That's what you said, not me. Are you saying I presented a false dichotomy? A false dichotomy, also known as a false dilemma or either/or fallacy, occurs when only two options are presented as possibilities in a situation where other options exist. What are the two options I presented? I asked two Y/N questions and even if the answer to the first is Y, the answer to the second can still be Y or N, I'm not presupposing an answer.

But aren't some questions productive and others unproductive? And if so, should the US police the entire world to ensure that no unproductive questions are ever asked?

You are mixing two things. Rights in the US jurisdiction and outside of it

But aren't they applying to be a student in the US? Who is US to decide if a non-citizen can or cannot have freedom of speech? What a tone deaf comment was that!

I think the gray area is that the student is not in the US. They are in another country, and are applying at a consulate/embassy.

Many of the rights US residents have don't apply to visa applicants.

In any case, there are plenty of examples in the past where the US denied people entry based on stuff they've publicly said/written. What's different here is requiring you to disclose all your handles and make them public.

This really shouldn't be a gray area, if we just actually applied the constitution. The first amendment doesn't grant the people the freedom of speech, it restricts Congress from passing any law that infringes upon it.

This ultra-literalist approach leads to the conclusion that nothing in the constitution prevents states from outlawing speech or establishing a religion.

They didn't just stop at 1 amendment. There's a bunch of others that have been interpreted as covering those eventualities and many more.

we don’t get our rights from our government. It can only recognize these rights. Free speech is a human right whether or not a government recognizes it. People under an authoritarian regime still have a human right to free speech even if that regime outlaws it.

The part that makes me feel really uneasy about this is that the whole "pose a threat to U.S. national security" schtick is essentially due to anti-Israel/pro-Palestine protests. It's basically running cover for Israel in the most (in my opinion) counter-productive way possible.

International students barely have any power to do any harm in the strongest country in the world. Posting some random criticism doesn't change a thing. Feels like a massive powertrip from the administration to attack the weakest, since they legitimately fall short of addressing anything of real significance in general.

So you missed out in your history lessons. It were always the students and philosophers/authors who were critical in regime unrest. Nowadays you can add filmmakers, but you can easily control them with budgets.

I didn't say students couldn't be critical of the regime; I said that doesn't change anything when foreigners do it in the US, supposedly a strong country in the world. Well, the citizens who vote cannot change much here, what do those without voting rights could?

They were using the word 'critical' in a different way. They're saying students, authors, and philosophers were critical (pivotal, important) in many regime changes in the past. Even if you can't vote, you can organize people and that is the most powerful skill of all.

What I don't get is, education is one of US's big "exports", and basically easy money; so why try to kneecap that revenue stream?

Because ideology railroads economy. If you take a look at fascist regimes throughout history, you will undoubtedly get a feel for their cruelty. But what most people miss is their incompetence. They're self-destructive by nature. Emotionally-driven by their ideology.

There's a metro station in Bucharest, Romania that's noticeably smaller than the rest. It was built in secret by the workers. The administration didn't want it built at all - it was by the University, and they believed students should be forced to walk, lest they become lazy. Luckily, the workers had the foresight to build the station in secret for some unknown future date. Now, it's one of the most used stations in the Capital.

Hardly a new political phenomena, and policies with known predictable outcomes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23X14HS4gLk

One must sympathize with the good folks at AMCHAM that will have to clean up the mess.

Have a wonderful day =)

Because we voted to destroy our own economy to own libs

Conservatives hate academia. They say this repeatedly and publicly. Their goal is to destroy the existing academic system and replace it with an ideological system focused on a particular set of right wing values.

The idea that academia makes money for the US, or brings in highly educated people to contribute to our economy, or produces scientific advancements that improve society is completely immaterial to the goal.

why give money to "woke" schools like Harvard?.... /s

The US is squandering its huge advantage in higher ed - every country has its top schools, but the US academic scene has so many top-tier schools/universities for research. Visa issues for international students have always been a pain - great talent for graduate schools, but with so many added shenanigans that were annoying at best and a major hurdle to next steps (postdoc, jobs, etc.) at worst.

Seems like instead of making it easier for smart and talented people to come to US, we are making it harder... cause terrorism?

Terrorism? You mean being a demographic disproportionately critical of Israel?

inadvertedly the US might finally put an end to the plague that has been euphemistically called social media (they are actually heavily antisocial). Coupled with AI and fakes, i hope we are done with this pestilence for good.

This won't put an end to social media. It will only amplify posts/thoughts that are uncritical of the administration.

Probably not. This mostly just tips the balance towards constraining what foreign students can say, and they are a tiny, tiny sliver of the criticism of the US online.

It's mostly about creating a climate of fear. This administration wants people who are vulnerable to shut up so they don't have to work so hard to shut people up. I don't doubt that they will move on to testing the waters on how to shut up citizens too; the paths for non-citizens are just more obvious (since the US government carved out clear delineations that indicate non-citizens don't enjoy Constitutional protections to allow them to be tortured after September 11).

Hopefully. I feel like people actually stopped socialising after the social media breakthrough. It's harder to ask friends out for a coffee or beer because "nah, we can just talk online". We have locked ourselves in virtual communities where we have a false feeling of importance. Boards were the last acceptable form of socialising, but it was different, it was aimed at exchanging knowledge and common interest, not replacing real interactions completely.

I've been thinking the same thing with AI. If IG and Tiktok become so flooded with AI slop that people lose interest in "social" media altogether, I think that's a net positive for society and general mental health.

Requiring "public" is wild

Hasn't America required visa applicants to tell them their social media account names for years? Seems like this change is just making those public, which is invasive, sure, but so was the original way which somehow nobody seems to mind anymore. This will just become the new normal too.

Sure, and shipping those same folks to Alligator Alcatraz will become the “new normal”. And eventually we’ll just start killing them for sport as the new normal. I don’t mean to be that guy, but Hitler also was just a “new normal” guy trying to remove some WWI debt and make Germany great again.

You missed the part about nobody seeming to mind anymore. We also don't mind having to apply for a visa in the first place instead of just buying a ticket on a ship and turning up at the port. Are visas Hitler too?

Why is this only for student visas? Why is it done by the same admin that tried to deport students for doing lawful student activities like writing articles for the school newspaper? You are not seeing the forest for the trees.

No, visas are not Hitler. I just don’t agree that “oh it’s just the new normal” is a reason why something is ok or right. That kind of reasoning is how we normalize atrocities until after when we realize it was completely messed up.

I agree.

Not a smart way to treat "customers" that often pay full-fare for college. Foreign student tuition payments can fund scholarships for a lot of US students. (Though exploding university administrative bloat might be devouring all funds available.)

Thought police, and you're required to make those thoughts available to the police.

While freedom of speech is obviously a right of citizens, I would argue that in order to preserve that right the US should be extending it to those coming into the country - outside of currently excepted threat settings of course.

Saying you don’t like the President should not deny you entry to the United States. This is, straight up, horse shit and I do not approve of it nor do I believe it should be permitted by the executive.

Argue? It's not at all ambiguous in the Bill of Rights that it does apply to non-citizens.

You’re right! Yet here I am seeing non-citizens treated like dog-sh!t and having those rights revoked like it’s just fine - and the Supreme Court seems to agree. But you’re right - I shouldn’t just cede the point. That’s what got us here in the first place.

News from June.

Lots of discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44314054

Seems like this will further incentive young people to avoid social media and/or only use anonymous burners.

Personal opinion: if people who live in China (a country with a much longer and clearer history of overt censorship) still talk about Winnie-the-Pooh, I doubt this change will really have the impact the administration hopes for.

What they hope to do is limit free speech and political criticism in the United States. They're starting with the groups the law gives them easiest access to, and they're hoping to expand that group to include native citizens in the near future (see the actions on birthright citizenship.)

It's hard to argue that political speech has been a success in China, and we're going to end up a lot like China if we don't fight this with everything we have.

Oh, no doubt. The only observation I'm making is that while the old adage was speaking specifically of USENET, it is often true of online comms in general: the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

If a government with nearly no backstops against public message-shaping has as much trouble as China does keeping criticism out, imagine the trouble one where many pieces of the system, structural and individual, will actively oppose erosion of the First Amendment (the real "criticism of the government" kind, not the hand-wavey "It should be a crime to ban me from Facebook" kind) will experience.

> What they hope to do is limit free speech and political criticism in the United States.

Not the US. Israel. The point is to prevent people from criticizing israel and israel's genocide. Our politicians don't care if foreigners criticize the US. Our politicians really really care about people criticizing Israel for some strange reason.

That’s more because censorship in China gets frequently exaggerated. Winnie the Pooh has never been censored, for example.

Why do we shoot our own selves in the knees for Israel?

MAGA hates higher education, so they will kneecap higher education. Israel is just a convenient excuse.

It's not for Israel, that's just a proxy - a shibboleth - if you are against Israel you are either a communist, libtard or muslim, so not welcome. It's Trump shooting some knees to stay in power.

Edit: I know. It's just a convenient foil!

I think if you actually talked to Trump supporters you'd find we're not particular fans of Israel either.

Most Americans aren't. But almost every single American politician is a die-hard for them...

Certainly this is not reflected in any of your policies or behavior. But, then again, Trump supporters appear to have a sort of Stockholm relationship with him.

He's a liar, but he's our liar. We're hoping most of the shit he talks about never passes into law, but those are our laws. Wait, what are we voting for again? Why are we even voting for this dumb-ass is we don't like his policies and don't want them to pass?

When Trump coin was released, my Mom had a talk with me. She said "I just don't get it. He's already rich, why would he need to run a scam on American people? This makes no sense. Why would he stoop to that level?" I didn't have the heart to tell her he didn't stoop anywhere, that's just the level he's at.

What's the problem to create an account on Truth Social and buy a maga hat before presenting yourself to a CBP officer?

how would they know if it’s public or not?

They would check. And if it turns out you have another email you didn't report, which is somehow linked to some other digital asset of yours, and therefore traceable, then you'd have a bigger problem.

They will not spend that much money looking at a Visa applicant. Shit, we barely spend that much time granting high security clearances.

> They will not spend that much money looking at a Visa applicant

Heard of software?

Yes. What software are they using at State / DHS to do this? Is it any good? Will it read Arabic? Russian? Do they have access to Llms? The answer is almost always no.

I guess I don’t really believe Palantir’s marketing?

The requirement forces you to keep the profile public when appearing for the interview at least.

Presumably if they find out that you have an account you didn't share, you're out.

They make applicants list the accounts and then check them.

And what if you don't list your social media accounts?

Then the applicant has defrauded the US. Lying on an immigration form is a criminal offense.

Yes. People don't take this seriously enough. I personally have known people who have been arrested and tried because of innocent things they did not disclose in their application. The charge is essentially "Lying to officials".

Of course, the US wanted them out for other reasons, but this is the simplest charge to bring against them.

Wouldn't be surprised if there was an announcement of a Trump branded social media scrubbing service soon.

And DOGE will have access to the client list so they can share it with ICE.

Nowadays there are "paid" protestors and social media personalities who seem to spread misinformation for money. Information warfare being a thing now, I think this was a quite expected move from US immigration. I'm only surprised they told this out loud.

> Nowadays there are "paid" protestors and social media personalities who seem to spread misinformation for money.

Most of whom are Chinese.[1] Somehow I don't think they plan to go after them.

[1] Very obvious during the Hong Kong protests.

Yes. All these protestors are "chinese". Good one.

I never thought screening visa applicants for threats to national security would be so controversial.

This isn't about national security threats. It's about any excuse for racism and xenophobia.

Posting social media comments protesting the actions of Israel is not a national security threat but is something we've seen this administration invoke penalties for.

The hatred, bigotry, and raw short sightedness are horrifying. To the degree that America is "great" it is great because it was a place where great people from around the world wanted to come to and wanted to live in. Turning away students - the most likely source of new scientific and artistic greatness in the future - is throwing away any leadership we had and actively harming the country.

It is in fact harming national security if these brilliant minds study, live, and work in other countries.

> Turning away students...

Turning away troublemakers is a smart thing to do. There are more than enough talented people waiting in line. People who will not shout down professors, occupy university buildings and protest against the government of the country that received them as guests.

Yes, being anti-protest... surely this will go over well to a largely American audience on an American website. Surely this doesn't go against the core and fundamental beliefs that founded our country.

You'll find there's a high correlation between intelligence and being regarded as a troublemaker. Also a correlation with strongly held beliefs of many types, including moral beliefs.

Challenging authority is a requirement of progress - if you can't criticize the system how can you dream of improving it?

Yeah, we should never host foreigners who protest what they view as fascism, such people aren't worth having. Remember the dumb Albert Einstein! What horrible political views he had.

"To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas will be instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to “public.”"

It leaves me with a lot of questions.

What even constitutes a social media profile? For how long do you have to mark it public? What if marking all your social media profiles public exposes you to harm? Is it acceptable to delete all your posts (that were previously _private_) before making a profile public, or to delete whole profiles, or would that desire for privacy be seen as concealing some threat? How is it known if there are non-public profiles? Would govt believe somebody who has no social media presence at all?

"screening visa applicants for threats" is a very simplistic summary of the situation. I think visa applicants are just gonna go eleswhere.

It isn't. The problem is that everyone thinks they'll be screened for political views, because of prior statements by the white house.

This is not a hypothetical. Folks have already been deported just for having contrarian views to the administration that are well within bounds of a polite bar argument about politics.

They will be. They tried to deport a foreign student for writing an article critical of Israel.

Could you say what that case was? I'm curious what the article actually said. Simply "critical of Israel" is surely not accurate because even Trump himself has recently been critical of Israel. It's completely normal to criticize countries.

Rumeysa Öztürk: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/tufts-student-from-tur...

here's the article: https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/03/4ftk27sm6jkj.

Trump is king, he can do what he wants. Foreign students trying to do that, he'll kick them out. The rules are very clear

The famously dangerous threats that are thoroughly documented college level students. Americans have commited the majority of terrorist attacks in their own country, especially if you count school shootings

Not sure how we pivoted to "terror" from "national security," which is much broader, but since we are here:

School shootings are not typically classified as "terrorism" unless they are explicitly motivated by political, ideological or religious agendas.

Foreign-sponsored terrorist attacks, such as 9/11, San Bernardino shooting, Pulse nightclub shooting, etc result in significantly higher casualties, widespread fear and greater economic impact (in the $trillions). Foreign actors are typically more sophisticated, thus calling for enhanced screening. And their actions have further-reaching consequences such as the cost of wars and homeland security measures.

School shootings are not typically classified as "terrorism" because they're overwhelmingly done by white males. The same reason the current administration refuses to react to white nationalist terrorism.

It's the equivalent of:

"To apply for a visa, applicants need to give us (and the rest of the world) access to all email correspondence."

No one is complaining about screening for threats. It's how that's a problem.

This already exists...border agents can require you to unlock your phone and other electronic devices, without a warrant or probable cause. Refusing means facing denial of entry

I know that - it's not the same. Border agents will not say "Hey, we think you have 2 phones, and you brought only one. We'll deny entry and next time bring both."

They also don't say "Hey, this phone you gave me doesn't have any photos. You must have backed them up elsewhere and are hiding them from me. I'm denying entry."

In other words, they don't say "Hey, bring all the photos you ever took."

Yes, and that's bad. "This isn't a problem because it's always been a problem" isn't a defense.

And, we must acknowledge the obvious: such authoritarian rules and requirements rely on benevolence. Meaning, if your leader and border agents are good people, then this isn't a problem.

Well... are they? I say no, so now this is a problem that didn't exist previously.

This is not about national security. We were already scanning social media profiles for that kind of stuff when folks applied for visas. This is arbitrary.

Would only international students pose the risk to national security? Do you then agree that government should keep every profile under surveillance so no private profile exists for anybody? Also, who posts threats on social media?

Don't they already? At least for foreign people.

It's just that "national security" apparently now is the same as "threatens the Presidents ego".

There's screening for terrorist ties and then there's screening for wrongthink, no?

You know exactly how dumb this policy is, how threatening to freedom of speech it is, and why we are doing it only specifically for college students.

Welcome to America, where having a thought police is absolutely not against freedom of speech, while having the right to attend a literal Nazi march is a beautiful expression of Freedom of speech.

As terrible as the current US policy system is, a really good sanity check for any policies like this is "would you be able do this in Japan":

If you drove a car drunk and it turned into a police chase, would Japan be okay with it or would they put you in jail and/or deport you?

If you snuck across the Japanese border with intention to live there undocumented, would Japan be okay with it or would they put you in jail and/or deport you?

If you posted social media saying you wanted to overthrow the Japanese government, would Japan be okay with it or would they put you in jail and/or deport you?

Literally anything involving a gun and a crime, would Japan be okay with it or would they put you in jail and/or deport you?

If the answer is "no", you're probably feeding too heavily from ideology. The reality is that most countries, including far more stable and peaceful countries than the US will ever be, are far less tolerant of crossing borders illegally, drunk driving, gun offenses, etc. With their own citizens, to say nothing of foreigners on visas.

> If you posted social media saying you wanted to overthrow the Japanese government, would Japan be okay with it or would they put you in jail and/or deport you?

You're cherry picking and assuming they only look for obvious criminal offences like "government overthrow" and not dissenting views, criticism of the people in power, views against the economic order, etc. For some of those I can imagine the answer being "no" in Japan and "Yes" in the US.

Look at the guy's profile, they might actually be on a marketing team for Trump. Literally everything is talking points and tailor-made to shift perception.

I voted for Harris, she was a far more competent candidate. Not everybody that thinks crime should be illegal and that you shouldn't be able to just walk randomly across country borders to live in another country without their knowledge is a Trump voter. It's actually a pretty normal stance that most people take in most countries, including most left leaning people in the US.

Isn't Japan somewhat famously hard to immigrate too? This kinda smuggles in the premise that their state of affairs is desirable and normal.

Sure, replace Japan with New Zealand then

Or Switzerland.

>Isn't Japan somewhat famously hard to immigrate too?

Isn't Japan famously safe and clean?

Yes and it will just need a light dusting in a few decades and then a new people will be able to move in.

Is living in fear of crime from unrestricted illegal immigration a better fate? Like sure, your daughter was raped by some illegal third worlder and your city and public places are now unsafe and dirty, your society has low trust and no more social cohesion, but at least your ruling business elite have access to unlimited cheap labor in indentured servitude to keep the line going up. Heaven.

Man, Japan is really missing out here. They should listen to the wealthy western champagne liberals on HN who are outspokenly pro mass migration and yet spend most of their income to live in homes as far as possible from cities impacted by mass immigration, usually in majority-white suburbs with good safe schools and manicured lawns.

Edit: answering here to your comment below. Which statistics are you referring to? And why is resorting to the Hitler card on people who disagree with you your only argument? Let's address your vile accusations with facts from experts:

  "Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings."[1]

[1] https://archive.is/IrbAC#selection-445.127-445.686

> Is living in fear of crime from unrestricted illegal immigration a better fate?

It's certainly a purely theoretical fate. I have zero reason to believe undocumented people are more dangerous than citizens. I mean, intuitively, they risk so much more - namely deportation and torture. If I followed a Republican philosophy of tough on crime, I would then say they must be committing less crime.

Do we have any reason to believe they're more dangerous? And I mean real reasons, like statistics. No Patrick, "they're vaguely brown" is not a real reason. No Patrick, "homogeneous population" isn't a real reason either.

Immigrants are statistically less likely to commit crimes than naturalized Americans, and are far more likely to start companies and be entrepreneurs. Legal immigration is great and we should allow more people to come to the county, via expanded programs like H1-B visas.

That's a really different thing than one million people illegally entering the country and expecting that to just work out. Can you imagine the response Japan would have if a million Americans crossed into Japan illegally and expected to live and work there?

>That's a really different thing than one million people illegally entering the country and expecting that to just work out. Can you imagine the response Japan would have if a million Americans crossed into Japan illegally and expected to live and work there?

Bingo. So why are some western countries supposed to tolerate this?

> That's a really different thing than one million people illegally entering the country and expecting that to just work out.

Sure, but this isn't my point. Nobody has given me any reason to believe it won't work out, included our undocumented immigrants. I live in Texas, I should be seeing the worst of it. But uh... no... everything is pretty chill here. Not really seeing any of these doomerist complaints about those darn illegals.

> Can you imagine the response Japan would have if a million Americans crossed into Japan illegally and expected to live and work there?

I sure can, it would probably be piss-poor. Because Japan has a strong ethnic identity and community-oriented culture. We don't.

We're not Japan, nor do we really want to be Japan.

>I live in Texas, I should be seeing the worst of it. But uh... no... everything is pretty chill here.

Nation wide policies and society don't work on how your own chill vibe feels where you live, but on research, statistics and most importantly on the opinions of the democratic majority.

Sure, none of which have been shared and as such I will continue to treat as theoretical.

These are clearly the only possible outcomes in life, assuming of course that we put aside all the statistically likely things and ask what Hitler would think of it..

There have been cases of speed-tickets turned into deportation notices for international students. Would Japan do that too for a speed limit violation?

Great question: Going over 30KM/h over the speed limit in a non-highway zone (red ticket) in Japan is a criminal offense: it goes to court, there is a criminal record filed, they can suspend or revoke your driver’s license, and it can absolutely cause a VISA to be revoked or not renewed.

And unlike in the US they actually do enforce the laws there.

Those are the wrong questions.

The US was built on immigration; Japan never was -- it has always been anti-immigration. There's no Statue of Liberty with "give me your huddled masses" inscription.

These harsh actions go against the principles on which the US was founded and built. Similar actions in Japan do not go against the principles on which Japan was founded.

A separate conversation, but immigration -- legal or illegal -- greatly benefits the US economically. While conversely, Japan's immigration policies are greatly hurting its economy as its population declines.

I'm not pro- illegal immigration. I'm for making legal immigration much more accessible so that you don't end up with millions of illegal immigrants.

Why would I desire a regression to the mean as a citizen? Freedom of expression is critical, and there is no guidance at ALL about what constitutes offending speech vs. what does not. Arbitrary denial of entry is not something that should be celebrated.

Wow this shows some really nice propagandist accumen, I wonder if it's literally a paid employee or something, judging by the comment history. You first rope in drunk drivers and illegal immigrants with the point being discussed (legal students) and then you exaggerate, saying people might be threatening domestic terrorism on social media. How cool!

You fail to address, though, that 1- the US is requiring social media accounts to be set to public, forcing people's hand into being labled as aggitators. 2- stuff that might be of academic interest is notoriously targeted by this admin, like any research being done on Israel/Palestine, any research being done on ESG, not to mention the more overt leftist themes (pro-LGBT, abortion, etc academics). This change is an easy way for the admin to target this type of research

This is the second time in this thread you have accused me of being a paid Trump employee for having a different opinion than you.

Why? The United States is not Japan. The United States has built its national identity on exceptionalism; regression-to-the-mean reasoning is flawed in that context.

When the United States was founded, the average nation was some flavor of monarchy.

Sounds like we're regressing-to-the-mean, then.

There are certainly quite a few people trying to make that happen. They are opposed by, well, Americans.

None of these things apply to the average exchange student coming to the country legally to study at our universities.

I would bet you anything you want that posting that you don't like the Israeli government's genocide in Gaza (a major topic for this type of scrutiny) will get you neither deported nor even turned back at the border in Japan.

It probably won't in America either though. You're making up a strawman.

Yes it will, they are already trying it like with Rumeysa Ozturk.

Yet still didn't.

> If you posted social media saying you wanted to overthrow the Japanese government, would Japan be okay with it or would they put you in jail and/or deport you?

This administration already considers protesting genocide a “threat to national security”. It has a well documented history of retaliating against protected speech. This latest policy is authoritarian retaliation against of free speech, plain and simple. Comparing the policy of a liberal democracy like Japan to contemporary US authoritarianism is truly disingenuous.

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