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US pauses new student visa interviews as it mulls expanding social media vetting
- legitster 1y agoIt's not enough to say America is no longer great. We must apparently destroy everything and everything that made America great in the first place.
- decremental 1y ago[dead]
- vFunct 1y ago[flagged]
- h2zizzle 1y agoThinking about the uproar over, "God damn America." (Which was also a diatribe condemning America's practical sins, not its high ideals and values, as media coverage of the time would have had you believe.) If we'd taken that seriously, and seriously dialogued about the way America comports itself at home and on the world stage, would we be here today?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- vFunct 1y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> HN really has to fix their Zionist problem Not a Zionist. Flagged because the comment is tired and off topic. Nobody coming to this thread is going to have an epiphany about what's going on in Gaza.
- vFunct 1y agoThe comment was about the US and how to deal with it going forward. Everybody already knows about Gaza and how bad Israel is. The question now is whether the US will continue to exist. I get tired of finance topics. Should we flag those as well?
- legitster 1y agoThe comment is marginally off-topic, in bad faith, and incredibly inflammatory without providing much to the discussion.
- vFunct 1y agoHow many other comments do you see promoting the elimination of the US? People that say things are done in "bad faith" generally want people to stay in their well established lane. The world doesn't work that way. It's fine to be on the edge. There are large segments of even the own US population that sees the US as harmful to the world. What are YOUR proposals on what should replace it?
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- dyauspitr 1y agoUnbelievable, this pipeline is probably one of the main drivers of American dominance over the last 40 years or so. These pipelines are directly responsible for more than 50% of US unicorns.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoTrump is unlikely to live long enough to see that the effects of that and besides, why should he care about other people's fortunes?
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- qoez 1y ago[flagged]
- ecshafer 1y agoIts not anything about genetically superior foreign students. Its the fact that we take the BEST foreign students, educate them and hopefully capture a % to stay. We are able to both make America stronger AND everyone else weaker. They also subsidize our schools by paying large sums of cash, at least for the wealthy foreign students.
- colingauvin 1y agoThe other half of this coin is that it suppresses graduate student wages. This could be a huge boost to American grad students, potentially.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> other half of this coin is that it suppresses graduate student wages. This could be a huge boost to American grad students, potentially Raising taxes and cutting funding to universities will almost certainly require the graduate-student population to be culled.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoThe 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.
- EGreg 1y agoI thought first amendment was only for our citizens Congress shall pass no law — but executive branch under Trump does whatever it wants regardless of laws anyway…
- howard941 1y agoThe 1st amendment covers "US persons." A US Person is a term of art broader than a citizen. OTOH since this is for a visa review that a non citizen wouldn't need I don't see where it comes into play.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> 1st amendment covers "US person” 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/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/preamble/ [2] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/
- breppp 1y agoIf you want to be overly semantic it only talks about freedom of assembly for the "people", which as you defined above might refer to "the people of the united states" 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
- ModernMech 1y agoThis is such a bad, unbelievable self own for the United States. Our education system was the envy of the world, it has been an economic engine for our country, creating technical expertise, high tech startups and jobs, and exporting our values across the world. But because of a perception that Academica is a liberal power center, conservatives are focused on destroying it. And that's what this is, make no mistake; this is a culture war, an anti-intellectualism crusade, and a celebration of ignorance and raw power triumphing over reason. A dark time for America as the destruction of our education system unfolds, but good people are fighting back.
- jm20 1y agoLol in what world was the US education system the envy of the world? We’ve been routinely clowned for overspending, poor outcomes, university tuition bloat, and everything else under the sun.
- searine 1y agoK-12 and undergraduate are passable. The thing that the US excels at is scale. No other country can match the US academic research environment. Thousands of well funded research institutions. Broad competitive funding opportunities at every school. It was a golden age of knowledge that is being crushed by MAGA.
- jasonhong 1y agoWhat is the basis for your assertion? Pretty much every list of top universities in the world routinely lists a large number of US universities. For example, in the Shanghai ranking, 16 of the top 20 universities are in the USA. https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2024 https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2024 In US News and World reports of top universities, 14 of the top 20 universities in the world are in the USA. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/ra... In The Times Higher Education ranking, 13 of the top 20 universities in the world are in the USA. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/latest/world-ranking https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin... To be blunt, your assertion has extremely weak evidence. I urge you to look at facts and evidence and not your feels.
- geodel 1y ago[flagged]
- x3n0ph3n3 1y ago[flagged]
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoI'm very curious how you would explain that viewpoint, and if it's possible to hold that viewpoint while remaining ethical
- TrackerFF 1y agoI think everyone with a working brain will know that once this sort of vetting starts, it will usher through a host of other keywords that they will search for. But let's forget that for a second, and talk about the present. How do you define an "activist"? Lengthy blogs on certain topics? Heated debates on facebook? A temporarily "I stand with Palestine" profile picture? A facebook like on any newspaper article that's negative toward Israel?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> don't want to import student activists My problem is we have no verifiable visibility into the process. If this were a rule banning anyone who has a recent history of advocating for violent organisations, e.g. Hamas, or even performatively-disruptive modes of protest, e.g. bridge blocking and breaking into buildings, I'd be okay with that. I'd disagree. (In part due to hypocrisy. The January 6th rioters broke into the Capitol.) But I'd accept it as validly promulgated under our system of laws. As it stands, I have no faith that someone with a "fuck Elon" tweet won't be barred from a PhD programme.
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- MPSFounder 1y agoI cannot fathom why we are vetting people on behalf of Israel. The whole thing started because our gov can no longer control the narrative (making Israel look as the good guy has long since been refuted by every educated individual, in favor of the apartheid regime they have instilled for the last decades, and their recent genocide). So to get this straight, as an American, I should favor vetting on behafl of a foreign nation because rich donors to Trump feel offended by empathy that college students have for children being mutilated and displaced? This is beyond ridiculous. It seems Trump is panicking at his inability to control narrative (as our media has been controlled by pro-Israel billionaires for decades). That is the sole reason for this move and their purchase of TikTok. The ugly truth is China and Europe will retain this talent, and over the span of 20-50 years, their economies will reap benefits from such progress.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> cannot fathom why we are vetting people on behalf of Israel The animating reason has less to do with Israel and much more with popular distaste with academia's left-leaning tendencies, particularly since the 1990s, combined with the Columbia protests having been incredibly poorly handled by all parties.
- bigyabai 1y agoNope, it has everything to do with Israel. This is not a recent phenomenon either. Obviously, if left-leaning academia was actually impaired by it's tendencies then right-leaning academia would overtake it. Alas, there is not a better-known school in America than Harvard. The auspices of free market competition have not funded the construction of more conservative schools. The liberal academics have American innovation by the balls, and the market is okay with that. The good news is, that's a very American process. Your school can be dirty, base, vile, poorly-sorted, distasteful and frugal, but completely validated if your results are superior to your peers. Attempting to force any other outcome is a subversion of the market's will, tooled by the instruments of a planned economy. > particularly since the 1990s You know, I recall a certain jingoist American conflict before the 1990s where students protested nationwide. It didn't do much, adults also blamed "both sides" for handling it poorly, but it did ultimately prove the students right when America lost the war. Goes to show how quickly things can change, but I'll leave that as food for thought instead of bringing up Saddam's WMDs.
- cmacleod4 1y agoUK universities should be rolling out the red carpet for all the great students who the USA no longer want. Unfortunately our government seems more interested in pandering to the bigots who think "more foreigners == bad". :-(
- gambiting 1y agoUK universities did their own student exodus move with brexit, I'm still friends with several professors of Russel group universities and they all say the same thing - after Brexit the number of MSc and PhD level students have collapsed and not recovered anywhere since. UK is in for a very rude awakening in a few years where its position as a superpower in research starts to dwindle. And to add on top of it - the universities are now cramming as many international(non-EU) students as possible, because they pay ridiculous fees that support school coffers - lecturers are more or less directly told they are not allowed to fail those students in any way almost no matter the transgression because they are the main source of income for universities.
- tbrownaw 1y agoHasn't the UK been jailing people for sending mean tweets? That seems a bit beyond refusing entry.
- ben_w 1y agoIf you mean this one: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/why-was-lucy-connolly-jailed-for-a-tweet-and-why-was-her-appeal-dismissed/ar-AA1F8xCN https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/why-was-lucy-connolly-... Then no, she was jailed for calling for incitement to commit crimes. If you mean this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_joke_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_joke_trial Then I'd say essentially yes, despite it being a fine and not imprisonment and getting quashed later anyway, because most of us aren't lawyers and won't care about that kind of distinction — and that goes double for students on a visa.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoSo it happened but only if you don't care about the distinction between fact and fiction.
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- aborsy 1y agoHow does this system work? Applicants can provide some but not all of the logins. Also, people will then turn to multiple accounts.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Applicants can provide some but not all of the logins. Also, people will then turn to multiple accounts If the form asks you for all your social-media handles, and you fail to list one, that's visa fraud.
- relaxing 1y agoGood thing those social media sites haven’t embedded themselves in with the administration and aren’t in a position to execute dragnets for secret accounts of visa applicants.
- xtracto 1y agoWonder how does that work... is HN considered a "social media site"? Is reddit? If at some point I opened a throwaway reddit account to ask about the mole in my anus, does should I report that account? And if I forgot the handle, am i doing fraud omitting it?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Wonder how does that work... is HN considered a "social media site"? Is reddit? Practically, if you’re posting pro-Hamas content here and the guidelines wind up citing that as something they look for, yes. > if I forgot the handle, am i doing fraud omitting it? Fraud typically requires mens rea. Not legal advice. But I don’t think this would count as visa fraud.
- int_19h 1y agoThat kind of ambiguity is a feature to them, not a bug. It means that every citizen naturalized under these rules will have to ponder what happens if USCIS starts digging into their application with specific intent to find a reason to consider it fraudulent, and self-censor accordingly.
- davidw 1y agoHow the media would describe this in another country: "This is designed to cripple their universities, seen as a center of resistance to the regime"
- trealira 1y agoIt wouldn't be wrong in this case, either.
- z2 1y agoStarting recipe for a revolution of a more cultural nature, from a half-dozen historical cases: - Target schools as centers of dissent and either co-opt or failing that, dismantle them. - Portray 'intellectuals' as enemies of the people or agents of foreign/cosmopolitan influence. Use the state apparatus is to punish, exile, or eliminate intellectuals to make examples of them and enforce ideological conformity. - Elevate the the "common man" or "true proletariat" as the ideal citizen embodying folk wisdom, in opposition to educated elites. - Frame any opposition as existential threats to the nation's values or vitality; invoke religious or nationalist themes.
- xk_id 1y agoWould you say this comment needed major changes, in order for a MAGA supporter to feel that it is applicable against his own political adversaries?
- tremon 1y agoThe choice of words doesn't affect how a MAGA supporter "feels" about anything. It matters much more who says them and in what tone.
- archagon 1y ago> Later in the recording, Yarvin said that after a hypothetical authoritarian president was inaugurated in January, “you can’t continue to have a Harvard or a New York Times past since perhaps the start of April”. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/21/curtis-yarvin-trump https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/21/curtis-yarvi...
- TrackerFF 1y agoBanana republic shit. Pure and simple. I'm pretty sure a bunch of three-letter agencies have intel on potential extremists entering the country legally. Intel agencies in allied countries do share this information. This is nothing more than a move to stop the "politically undesirable" from entering the country. I guess it's going to work like this: - Crawl all social media activity (and probably mails, text messages, etc. in the future) - Run a semantic analysis, if the person scores high on subjects which MAGA opposes, refuse entry. Stopping "activist students" is to kick open that door.
- Whoppertime 1y agohttps://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-f-chapter-3 https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-f-chapter-... Form DS-160, the Nonimmigrant Visa Application used by people applying to enter the U.S. on a temporary (non-immigrant) basis—like tourists, students, or business travelers asks the following question "Are you or have you ever been a member of a Communist or other totalitarian party?" These sorts of questions have been upheld as constitutional in the past by the United States Supreme Court Harisiades v. Shaughnessy (1952): The Court upheld the government's authority to deport legal residents who had been members of the Communist Party, ruling that such deportations did not violate the First or Fifth Amendments. Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972): The Court affirmed the executive branch's broad discretion in denying visas, even when such denials impact First Amendment interests of U.S. citizens.
- lostmsu 1y agoAs a person who decided to join such a party of own volition, answered "yes" to that question in that form, and had to submit an accompanying statement, then proceeded to get US citizenship, I believe this particular bit is a violation of the first amendment, and would love the Supreme Court to struck it down. It violates the letter of the law, and probably the intent too. For all we know had the idea of communism existed in the late 18th century some founding fathers could have subscribed to it.
- nojvek 1y agoSupreme Court is a joke. It’s majority staffed with conservative hard liners with life long terms. So much for separation of powers.
- hedgehog 1y agoBringing this back to startups, which hubs seem likely to benefit most from this policy direction? It seems likely a lot of students will choose (or be forced) to go elsewhere, places like London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vancouver could take up some of the tech-trajectory students and end up with stronger startup ecosystems as a result. I imagine we have a lot of non-US founders here, for the benefit of those of us without that experience what's it been like building in your city? https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/search https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/se... https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/artificial-intelligence https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/ar...
- alephnerd 1y ago> Bringing this back to startups, which hubs seem likely to benefit most from this policy direction? China (Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Greater Bay Area), India (Bangalore, Hyderabad, NCR, Mumbai), and South Korea (Seoul) - which represent the bulk of international student admissions in the US - especially at Ivy tier and T10 STEM programs, where the majority of grad and professional students tend to have studied in their home country for undergrad. Those same students who would have done an PhD in CS at Stanford or an MBA at HBS will now do an MSCS or an MBA at their domestic equivalent, or most likely go straight into the workforce or start their own company with the equivalent amount of capital. > places like London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vancouver could take up some of the tech-trajectory students Canadian, Singaporean, and British universities that aren't Oxbridge haven't done so hot with the top tier cream of the crop for undergrad. If you are good enough to get into an undergrad program at a Tsinghua, IIT Delhi, or SNU tier program you tend to attend those instead of studying abroad because you can command a European salary with Asian CoL, and can anyhow study at a top tier program for graduate school. Furthermore, top universities in China, India, and South Korea have been attracting Chinese, Indian, and Korean faculty from abroad with tenure track deals and/or significant subsidizes, seed grants, and labs for several years now. It's also extremely difficult to immigrate to Singapore or the UK as a student AND THEN gain residency (the US was significantly easier until today, but is now on par with both those countries). The cream of the crop of Chinese, Indian, and South Korean graduates already largely stopped immigrating to the US by the 2020s due to EU-level domestic salaries, more financing options for creating a company, and onerous visa programs. That said, Singapore will remain a target destination for incorporation because of it's Bilateral Investment Treaties with China, India, and the US thus making it easier to access global capital, but the bulk of operations will continue to occur in China and India.
- endtime 1y agoI hope what this policy amounts to is declining visas to students who support proscribed terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hizballah, broadcast blood libels, harass Jewish students on campus, etc. I had a foreign (Pakistani) student tell me, to my face, "I don't like you because you're a Jew." -- in front of a group of mutual friends, who awkwardly laughed it off as if he must have been joking. It's _not_ about mere criticism of Israeli policy or war doctrine, and pretending it is seems to be a new popular misperception on both the far left and the far right. This was a very real thing when I was an undergrad, and it's surely much worse today. I have family with long histories of attending Ivy League schools, and their seniors are no longer applying to those schools, entirely over antisemitism. If American universities were 1/3 populated by, say, Russian students with a high propensity for harassing gay students, implying that all gay people are predators, etc., I think the left-leaning commenters here would take a very different perspective.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> what this policy amounts to is declining visas to students who support proscribed terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hizballah, broadcast blood libels, harass Jewish students, on campus, etc. I dressed up as Ghadaffi in college for a party. Not because I knew almost anything about the man. But because it was edgy and adolescent brains are dumb, particularly when male. Plenty of students who will go on to be good and productive members of society hold stupid views now, possibly most given the state of scial media. This move, in particular, comes across as in particularly bad faith inasmuch as it's being done by the man who pardoned the January 6th nutters. Actual violent criminals subscribing to terrorist tactics.
- vFunct 1y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Shouldn't we increase visas to those that support Hamas and Hezbollah? No. It is perfectly acceptable for a society to have norms and conventions it wants those seeking to enter it to uphold. One of those is not accepting violence as a political tactic.
- Teever 1y agoThe chilling effect that this is going to have will have blowback consequences for the Social Media industry and the surveillance community that work lockstep to get people to share personal details and opinions in public online environments. It'll take a while but people will start hiding their political beliefs and actions as a reaction to this and then the culture of oversharing may change. This will ultimately be detrimental to national security as the US won't be able to so readily determine who is radical and who may potentially become radicalized.
- srhtftw 1y agoIf we're going to have laws like these, then people who publish their content should have all the rights and responsibilities big players do. Everyone's content should be protected by laws, DRM and encryption. Organizations profiting from theft and exploitation should be prosecuted as the pirates and criminals they are. If they want to profit from content, let them license it and pay with real money instead of likes and upvotes. People need to stop impoverishing themselves and their communities by giving away all their personal details. They need to stop giving away what is precious to them to the likes of google, meta and X. If that means a decline of media subsidized by advertising and AI, so be it. So I hope your prediction is correct. I would love to see stupid laws like these lead us to a world of small community networks protected by encryption and rights laws.
- tbrownaw 1y agoWhat fraction of people actually participate in the various pseudosocial sites?
- tremon 1y agoClose to 100%, I'd say.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y agoI do wonder what country will step up to be the new superpower in research since the US is dead-set on torpedoing what made the country great to begin with. It won't be the UK and I don't think it will be Canada.
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- mrtksn 1y agoWhat happens in US is heartbreaking. For so many years the US was the place to go if you intend to invent the next stage of humanity and it wasn't like going to a foreign country but instead US was like this magical place where everyone is welcome and everyone can become American if they have what it takes. When the best and brightest of a county went to America it didn't feel like brain drain because whatever they do in the USA was about all the humanity. It was just this place where they invent the technology and the whole world benefits of it, so our tax money and resources weren't spent just to make US companies richer - that was a side effect. Even the aliens in the movies always arrived in US, always wanted to talk to the US president and whatever US did later was done for the whole humanity and all that felt right. Why USA decided that they no longer want to be that place? It looks excruciatingly stupid to deny people who already got lots of investment on them to get some more investment on them in US and they cash out. Is it possible that the decision makers believe that AI replacing human intelligence is just around the corner and they can cut off the actual intelligent people to reduce liability on race/nationality issues from MAGA supporters?
- gardenhedge 1y agoIt was never like that though. You could neve overstay your welcome/visa.
- Tadpole9181 1y agoLiterally nothing in their comment or the article relate to overstayed Visas.
- msgodel 1y agoI know outsiders view the US this way but there are many people (about half the population) for which this is our only place and don't necessarily want it to be strip mined for that. If you can understand this (and I know understanding politics for a foreign country can be very difficult. I've spent a lot of time learning to do this as a hobby) the behavior of the US electorate will be much more understandable.
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- Gud 1y agoWow, what happened to diversity of opinions? Only those who agree with the fascists in charge are agreed to enter?
- stevenwoo 1y agoThey already did a few passes on current student immigrants with the first wave of incarceration and deportation for those who were in the vicinity of any protest against Israel's killing of civilians and apartheid like conditions in West Bank and Gaza.
- arunabha 1y agoThe irony of a MAGA govt which claims to fight for freedom for individuals, trying to filter out potential immigrants if they have expressed opinions contrary to current dogma is particularly palpable.
- dino222 1y agoI think it's not unreasonable to connect vetting student visas with the fight with Harvard, but could it be correlation rather than causation? Social media vetting has been in place since 2019, surviving multiple administrations. Most people I know do not fill in the boxes on their ESTA form despite technically being perjury from what I understand. Expanding social media vetting to better catch unreported social media accounts to enforce a now longish-standing policy on a smaller group of visa applicants as a start doesn't seem too insane I think? It does if you link it to university suppression like the Harvard case, but I think there might be some straw-reaching in connecting them.
- patriot111 1y agoLooking forward to everyone here having there accounts marked, will be some great deportations and imprisonments coming. dang especially should be getting a few years at Guantanamo for sure.
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