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

111 pointsposted 18 hours ago
by BeetleB

43 Comments

scarecrowbob

10 hours ago

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.

rcbdev

18 hours ago

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.

MinimalAction

18 hours ago

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.

duxup

18 hours ago

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.

user

10 hours ago

[deleted]

jmbwell

18 hours ago

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.

rendaw

10 hours ago

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?

user

18 hours ago

[deleted]

CGMthrowaway

18 hours ago

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?

MinimalAction

18 hours ago

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.

user

17 hours ago

[deleted]

rurban

4 hours ago

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.

mamonster

17 hours ago

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.

osti

18 hours ago

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?

const_cast

16 hours ago

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.

UncleMeat

2 hours ago

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.

aprilthird2021

18 hours ago

Because we voted to destroy our own economy to own libs

moelf

18 hours ago

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

condensedcrab

18 hours ago

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?

Tadpole9181

14 hours ago

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

seydor

18 hours ago

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.

MinimalAction

18 hours ago

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

a5c11

5 hours ago

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.

shadowgovt

18 hours ago

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).

somedude895

18 hours ago

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.

xnx

17 hours ago

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.)

duxup

18 hours ago

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

sailfast

18 hours ago

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.

Tadpole9181

14 hours ago

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

rhcom2

18 hours ago

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

shadowgovt

18 hours ago

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.

matthewdgreen

17 hours ago

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.

shadowgovt

17 hours ago

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.