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US will now review H-1B applicants' social media – require them to make public
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- dmitrygr 11mo agoA country may vet entrants according to any criteria it chooses, just like I may enforce any limits I wish unto who may enter my house. If the criteria are too egregious for the gain the applicants might get by being in that country, the talented immigrants who have options may go elsewhere and the country may need relax the criteria to recapture the market for bright minds.
- bdavisx 11mo agoI don't think anyone would argue with that - the problem here is that the requirements are being changed thru a process that involves no public or congressional input. The other issue is that the vetting will likely not just look for terroristic or other 'illegal' social media content - it will look for whatever the administration decides to look for - again without oversight.
- danielmarkbruce 11mo agoWe can't require public or congressional input on everything. As such, we need to elect a competent administration.
- commiepatrol 11mo ago[flagged]
- estearum 11mo agoNo, they’re saying the talented ones, the ones with the most optionality, will be the first to select alternative destinations. Typical adverse selection problem.
- codeddesign 11mo agoIf companies were looking for talent, 80% of H1B’s wouldn’t be from India, but from a much more diverse set of countries. The fact is that India culture is much more so subservient, willing to work more for less pay, won’t unionize, don’t follow major US/Euro holidays, don’t care about work/life balance..etc. Like it or not, it’s nothing more than exploitation as cattle to increase bottom line and sold as increased output.
- estearum 11mo agoNot sure how that’s relevant to my comment. You’re just saying there’s variance in quality and asserting your opinion about where quality exists/doesn’t exist. Fine. The fact there is any variance at all means the highest quality people will be deterred first. Adverse selection.
- codeddesign 11mo agoHighly relevant as it makes your point mute. The highest quality of talent is already not being brought in. A very specific pool of people are, and not for reasons of talent.
- estearum 11mo agoNo no, your observation is that a large amount of (per your assessment) low-quality people are already being brought in. This is completely unrelated to the question of whether the highest quality people are being brought in. By analogy: "New York City doesn't have a lot of the greatest restaurants in the country because 90% of the restaurants in New York City are not that great." It's just logically invalid. And divorced from reality. There's a reason the top students in the world overwhelmingly come to study in the US (at least up until recently). The US's dominance on this and its downstream effects is absolutely unambiguous and it's frankly silly to suggest otherwise. "We also have a lot of underqualified Indian H1Bs" is completely irrelevant. P.S. It's "moot" not "mute"
- inglor_cz 11mo ago
- csb6 11mo agoCountries have that right, and people have the right to criticize them for their policies and agitate to change them. This is a concept known as “politics”.
- ceejayoz 11mo ago> A country may vet entrants according to any criteria it chooses… Sure. But said country may have set rules for itself, like the First Amendment, that limit what's permissible beyond what international law and sovereignty alone permit. (To extend the house analogy, you may not actually be able to "enforce any limits I wish unto who may enter my house". It is, for example, generally unlawful for you to evict your minor child. If you rent out a room, that tenant has rights you can't violate, too. You can't keep out a cop with a valid warrant, either.)
- nielsbot 11mo ago- When you say “a country” this vetting may not in fact be what the majority of citizens want. - I suspect there is racism and xenophobia behind this - What kind of weak-ass people cannot tolerate dissenting opinions from visitors?
- newfriend 11mo agoThe People elected the current executive to represent them. You are free to suspect anything you want - that doesn't make it true. Americans are tired of their country being abused.
- nielsbot 11mo ago> The People elected the current executive to represent them. Not all the people and the policies being put in place were not what was promised. > Americans are tired of their country being abused. Which Americans do you mean specifically? And which abuse? That's not specific enough.
- newfriend 11mo ago> Not all the people Meaningless. You are implying that unless someone is elected with 100% of votes, they do not represent the People? > policies being put in place were not what was promised. Again meaningless. Did Trump make promises specifically to not increase stringency of immigration law? He was elected to make decisions on behalf of the electorate. > Which Americans do you mean specifically? And which abuse? That's not specific enough. The Americans who elected the current President. Abuse by by companies and individuals defrauding American workers and taxpayers, while the government does nothing to combat it. The abuse by the government allowing millions of immigrants per year to the detriment of Americans (speaking of "not what was promised", the 1965 INA). I will take even this pittance at this point.
- nielsbot 11mo agoMy point is that the majority of the country is against what Trump and his racist collaborators are doing. Personally, I think racism is bad. > Abuse by by companies and individuals defrauding American workers and taxpayers, while the government does nothing to combat it I don't think this is quite correct, but I do agree companies should not by able to abuse immigration law to abuse immigrants for cheap and/or pliant labor. Workers rights should be upheld universally and our country should invest in narrowing our insane wealth gap.
- danielmarkbruce 11mo agoThis is a silly comment. The legality isn't really in question. It's whether or not it's a good idea. And citizens of a country will debate whether it's a good idea or not. If we citizens decide it's a bad idea, we'll vote out the government currently in power.
- arealaccount 11mo agoHow does this work if you don't have social media accounts?
- jankyxenon 11mo agoI think that almost definition implies you didn't post anything that disqualifies you. It's probably really easy to circumvent too if you're committed to (e.g., deactivate your account)
- 0cf8612b2e1e 11mo agoNot having a social media account sounds like something only a freedom hating terrorist would do. /s
- commandlinefan 11mo agoYou don't even have to deactivate it, just say you don't have one.
- ceejayoz 11mo agoCongrats, you're off to jail now. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001
- ceejayoz 11mo ago"deactivate your account" They thought of that. https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Enhanced%20Vetting/CA%20-%20FAQs%20on%20Social%20Media%20Collection%20-%206-4-2019%20(v.2).pdf https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Enhanced%20Vettin... > In the case of an applicant who has used any of the social media platforms listed on the visa application in the preceding five years, the associated social media identifier would be required on the visa application form.
- zingababba 11mo agoThen you need to make one. They are trying to funnel all of the terrorists onto facebook instead of signal. This is all 10d chess.
- rose-knuckle17 11mo agoHopefully a consequence of that will be the rest of the world actively telling its people that america is probably a less healthy regime for them than countries like China and discouraging all recreational, educational and employment travel here, under any circumstances - including the desires and fetishes of unregulated capitalism. We are currently test driving the arbitrary execution of anyone without due process to see if THAT finally wakes up the population. But it wont.
- zeroCalories 11mo agoDon't know if you've been paying attention, but that's the intention. Many in the U.S are willing to sacrifice the country's GPD to inflict cruelty upon others and preserve "heritage Americans".
- newfriend 11mo agoThe US is more than simply an "economic zone". It's not cruel to want to keep your country from changing irreversibly. Foreigners don't have a right to immigrate. Americans are allowed to decide who they want to let in.
- zeroCalories 11mo agoIt's not what you want, it's what you're willing to do that's cruel and disgusting, newfriend
- newfriend 11mo agoBeing more strict about immigration law is not "cruel and disgusting".
- JuniperMesos 11mo agoYeah, I would rather just abolish the H1-B visa altogether. If someone can, legitimately or otherwise, put together a clean social media presence to get legal residency in country, this still doesn't guarantee that their natural born citizen children won't try to work against the interests of heritage Americans using whatever tools are available a generation from now.
- mikeyouse 11mo agoThey’re also going to ban you and all of your relatives from receiving a Visa if you’ve previously worked in content moderation, fact-checking, trust/safety. The most free speech hostile administration in modern history. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-orders-enhanced-vetting-applicants-h-1b-visa-2025-12-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-orders...
- rogerrogerr 11mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 11mo ago"You, a private company, are not allowed to perform content moderation on your own platform, and if you do, we, the Federal government, will punish you" is a clear First Amendment violation.
- rogerrogerr 11mo agoWas it a First Amendment violation when the Biden admin leaned on Facebook and Twitter to censor speculation about the origins of Covid?
- ceejayoz 11mo agoThus far, per SCOTUS (Barrett, joined by Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, Jackson), no. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/supreme-court-rules-in-jawboning-case https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/supreme-court-rules-in-... https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/justices-side-with-biden-over-governments-influence-on-social-media-content-moderation/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/justices-side-with-biden-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murthy_v._Missouri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murthy_v._Missouri (Nor was it illegal when the Trump administration did the same thing. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-trump-twitter-files-collusion-biden-censorship-1234675969/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-tru...) > When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down. > The Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to — the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online. Asking is legal. Punishing non-compliance is not.
- arjie 11mo agoWhen I filed my last DS-160 for my final H-1B renewal before I got my green card, I remember filling in my social media identifiers. In fact, a look at a 2019 document reveals that providing the identifiers has been required since at least back then[0]. Given that the identifiers must be offered, the intent must be that the posts should be read, so this is unsurprising[1]. I suppose one happy fact from this must be that USCIS has never had convenient access to dragnet surveillance. For if they did, they would simply have used the backdoor rather than ask you to make the profile public. For my part, I always assumed that the US Government knew everything I posted. I'm sure that if they didn't like me for some reason, they'd find a Richelieu accusation to make from what I've written. One would imagine it is like that other self-evident thing in the First Amendment, "separation of church and state", that is also practiced where convenient and not otherwise. Unless born American (and perhaps now, also "to Americans born American") some degree of scepticism for the tenets of the American Civil Religion will serve anyone well. 0: https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Enhanced%20Vetting/CA%20-%20FAQs%20on%20Social%20Media%20Collection%20-%206-4-2019%20(v.2).pdf https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Enhanced%20Vettin... 1: I'm sure someone could construct machinery where a blacklist is produced by one arm of the government with view to posts which is used by another arm that which has no post-access but I think that was unlikely when this was designed
- ceejayoz 11mo ago> I suppose one happy fact from this must be that USCIS has never had convenient access to dragnet surveillance. For if they did, they would simply have used the backdoor rather than ask you to make the profile public. Not necessarily. One of the very common tactics by federal investigators is asking a question they already know the answer to. That lets them know when you're lying, which can be a crime on its own!
- arjie 11mo agoThat's a good point. And particularly in immigration (and I think I recall in this very form - the DS-160) which has such questions such as "Are you a communist?" and "Are you a terrorist or have you ever sympathized with them?" which are clearly intended for the purpose you describe: to catch you in a lie and prosecute you for that even if not for something else. I suppose the analogous technique here is whether you delete content they've already recorded. Though it could be simpler, and they're just trying to cause an unforced error where someone fails to make a profile public, creating an avenue to reject them even if it were perfectly fine otherwise.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- expedition32 11mo agoHonestly I never expect to visit NYC ever again unless they secede. It is on the same list as Pyongyang and Moscow lol.
- mindslight 11mo agoSince they are going to treat the Constitution like a piece of toilet paper, couldn't they at least have the decency to stick it to Trump's shoe so that perhaps one of the people that have to clean up him will get bored and start reading it? signed, an actual American that still believes in individual Liberty.
- sporkxrocket 11mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 11mo ago> They’ve already expanded the definition of “antisemitism” to include saying Israel has no right to exist. They've gone quite a bit further than that. "Israel shouldn't indiscriminately bomb civilian children", for example.
- Aerbil313 11mo agoI don’t use traditional social media, at all? With how things are going, I’m starting to wonder whether I should make some accounts just to pass the normalcy test. I’m in college and I don’t have a single friend who doesn’t actively use Instagram.