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U.S. will review social media for foreign student visa applications
- chistev 1y ago[flagged]
- decremental 1y ago[dead]
- actionfromafar 1y ago[flagged]
- rcbdev 1y agoI 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.
- actionfromafar 1y ago[flagged]
- MinimalAction 1y agoUniversities 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.
- dgfitz 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cookszn 1y ago[flagged]
- Macha 1y agoThough the reason they are top universities is partly their ability to attract top talent (as most of these top university measures are based on things like "number of papers published"), which this is going to impact.
- hoegarden 1y agoThe American rags will publish the same number of articles which all need to cite from earlier rags, and they will probably keep or increase biases toward more American authors, so no one will notice when the US is irrelevant by a quantitative analysis.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- malcolmgreaves 1y agoIt won't.
- lp251 1y agoshame they won't be as good
- philosophty 1y agoGiven how easy it is for rich people to buy grades for their children in most countries, we might see an improvement.
- martin-t 1y agoPeople won't like how you said it but there is truth to it. Pretty much all students from my uni who went on exchanges to the US said the level over there is much lower and they were way above the local students. This was not the case elsewhere, most notably in Asian countries. There is some truth to every stereotype.
- duxup 1y agoUnfortunately 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.
- consumer451 1y agoFederal 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?
- ThunderBee 1y agoThis 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.
- consumer451 1y ago> 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.
- mandmandam 1y ago
- decremental 1y ago[dead]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoI never thought screening visa applicants for threats to national security would be so controversial.
- beders 1y ago[flagged]
- actionfromafar 1y agoIt's just that "national security" apparently now is the same as "threatens the Presidents ego".
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Arainach 1y agoThis 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.
- CGMthrowaway 1y ago[flagged]
- Arainach 1y agoIt's been in the news for months. https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trump-administrations-crackdown-pro-palestinian-campus-activists-faces-123526765 https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trump-administrations-cr...
- rhcom2 1y agoSeems like this will further incentive young people to avoid social media and/or only use anonymous burners.
- shadowgovt 1y agoPersonal 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 1y agoWhat 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 1y agoOh, 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.
- hearsathought 1y ago> 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.
- osti 1y agoWhat 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?
- actionfromafar 1y ago[flagged]
- throwawayoldie 1y ago[flagged]
- moelf 1y agowhy give money to "woke" schools like Harvard?.... /s
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoHardly a new political phenomena, and policies with known predictable outcomes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23X14HS4gLk 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 =)
- aprilthird2021 1y agoBecause we voted to destroy our own economy to own libs
- const_cast 1y agoBecause 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.
- 1y ago
- seydor 1y agoinadvertedly 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 1y agoThis won't put an end to social media. It will only amplify posts/thoughts that are uncritical of the administration.
- shadowgovt 1y agoProbably 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 1y agoI'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.
- a5c11 1y agoHopefully. 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.
- daft_pink 1y agohow would they know if it’s public or not?
- MinimalAction 1y agoThe requirement forces you to keep the profile public when appearing for the interview at least.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- timc3 1y agoThey make applicants list the accounts and then check them.
- mynameismon 1y agoAnd what if you don't list your social media accounts?
- malcolmgreaves 1y agoThen the applicant has defrauded the US. Lying on an immigration form is a criminal offense.
- BeetleB 1y agoYes. 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.
- duxup 1y agoPresumably if they find out that you have an account you didn't share, you're out.
- 1y ago
- siliconc0w 1y agoRequiring "public" is wild
- MinimalAction 1y agoInternational 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.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rurban 1y agoSo 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.
- MinimalAction 1y agoI 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?
- frakt0x90 1y agoThey 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.
- jmbwell 1y agoLooking 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.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoDoes/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 1y agoBut 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!
- BeetleB 1y agoI 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.
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoThis 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.
- ourmandave 1y agoWouldn'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.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- throwaway323929 1y agoAs 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.
- shadowgovt 1y agoWhy? 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.
- esseph 1y agoSounds like we're regressing-to-the-mean, then.
- shadowgovt 1y agoThere are certainly quite a few people trying to make that happen. They are opposed by, well, Americans.
- MinimalAction 1y agoThere have been cases of speed-tickets turned into deportation notices for international students. Would Japan do that too for a speed limit violation?
- duxup 1y agoThought police, and you're required to make those thoughts available to the police.
- aprilthird2021 1y agoWhy do we shoot our own selves in the knees for Israel?
- msgodel 1y ago[flagged]
- actionfromafar 1y agoIt'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!
- msgodel 1y agoI think if you actually talked to Trump supporters you'd find we're not particular fans of Israel either.
- const_cast 1y agoCertainly 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.
- aprilthird2021 1y agoMost Americans aren't. But almost every single American politician is a die-hard for them...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- sailfast 1y agoWhile 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 1y agoArgue? It's not at all ambiguous in the Bill of Rights that it does apply to non-citizens.
- sailfast 1y agoYou’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.
- sreejithr 1y agoNowadays 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.
- BeetleB 1y ago> 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.
- hearsathought 1y agoYes. All these protestors are "chinese". Good one.
- condensedcrab 1y agoThe 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 1y agoTerrorism? You mean being a demographic disproportionately critical of Israel?
- votepaunchy 1y ago[flagged]
- foxglacier 1y agoHasn'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.
- sailfast 1y agoSure, 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.
- foxglacier 1y agoYou 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?
- aprilthird2021 1y agoWhy 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.
- sailfast 1y agoNo, 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.
- foxglacier 1y agoI agree.
- mamonster 1y agoThe 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.
- xnx 1y agoNot 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.)
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoNews from June. Lots of discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44314054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44314054
- scarecrowbob 1y agoWhat 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.
- rurban 1y ago[flagged]
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 1y agoWhat's the problem to create an account on Truth Social and buy a maga hat before presenting yourself to a CBP officer?