So they check all your messages at the border? Do they dump your entire phone or what is happening there?
Well, at least maybe your moral compass needs some calibration? I typically go out of my way to avoid personal attacks here. But it's hard to do so if the reaction to "people get detained and locked up for more than a month with bad medical care" is: "oh great, no more far left".
We not should celebrate a slide into authoritarianism, which always starts with bullying weakly-positioned groups first, but the government has already floated with the idea of deporting Americans (and apparently already deported American kids [1]).
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/27/us/children-us-citizens-d...
I don’t even know where to start with that. Consider whether you have a broken moral compass or something. Consider moving to an actual dictatorship country instead of supporting the introduction of dictatorship in a new country?
Edit: beaten to the “moral compass” thing. Well said, above.
Anecdotally, there was a fascinating divide generated by the media and government to form some level of societal pressure( see 6,7,8,9 ). Granted, shaming and otherwise making life harder for people, who choose not to follow societal dogma is not exactly new ( 1, 2, 3, 10 ), but it has reached much higher levels during covid years ( 4, 5 ) and in some places resulted in involuntary rendition to quarantine camps ( 11, 12 ). And those don't even touch the informal ways people were openly talking about in groups.
[1]https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-03-27/should-d... [2]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9549707/ [3]https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/149/5/e20220... [4]https://www.wusf.org/health-news-florida/2022-12-27/thousand... [5]https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/column-why-workers-... [6]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10127050/ [7]https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211209-how-to-talk-to-v... [8]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/12/facebook-... [9]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... [10]https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/02/04/3837965... [11]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-59486285 [12]https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-03/camps-open-to-address...
Do you think that the whole "diversity statement" and DEI shticks were exactly tools of removal of people with different political views from academia?
US academia political activity is what made it attractive target for Trump administration. I'd prefer that it didn't happen or that US didn't have a president willing to destroy the academia, but I'd also prefer that universities would act as non-partisan entities. I think Boaz Barak summarized it well [1]
On a separate note, US searching/detaining/refusing entrance to other countries' nationals happened all the time [2,3,4,5,6,7], I don't think it's newsworthy or should change your position on visiting US.
[1] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/3/28/barak-harvard-m...
[2] https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/us-entry-horror-...
[3] https://firrp.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/September-2024_...
[4] https://immigrantjustice.org/press-releases/three-travelers-...
[5] https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-us-keeps-mistakenly-depo...
[6] https://www.propublica.org/article/can-customs-border-protec...
[7] https://thepienews.com/indian-government-gives-student-trave...
They're still doing research, and the funding hasn't completely dried up. But a lot of the people I talked to were international students, and the gallows humor of being deported was palpable. Made a slightly illegal turn in the van? Better make sure the cops didn't see you, or ICE is going to deport you back to where you came from. Hiring is completely frozen, and there is talk of potentially cutting down or "asking" students to graduate early. I overheard one of the professors talking to another about their students who were in limbo because their visas had been cancelled. It's pretty grim.
They also deny visitors visas of academics on the basis of political views.
The UK is objectively worse.
In European countries like France or Switzerland you get sentenced to prison time for describing someone as "a fat lesbian".
Free Speech is much better in the US.
It remains a fact that you cannot be deported from most countries (including my home country) for allegedly expressing a particular political opinion, without at least first being put through a legal process to determine that you did in fact express that opinion.
This whole "freedom" thing is what led to Trump administration, which routinely thinks they are above the law, being in power. And if you think its not that bad, just wait till 2028 when Trump will coup the government like he tried in 2020 except this time he will succeed.
People need to be on a tighter leash. And as for who holds the leash, nobody = the leash is the law, and anyone who tries to circumvent it gets punished. Nobody is above it, even if you feel like the law is unfair - work to get the law changed if that is what you want.
I remember the "gays will be in death camps" from reddit.
Now, without Covid, its pretty clear that he basically tanked the economy for no good reason.
People were warning that Trump is going to weaponize the government to go against people opposing him.
He is doing that now.
People were warning that Trump is going to ignore the law and the legal process.
He is certainly doing that now.
People were warning that Trump is going to implement policies based in racism.
He is certainly doing that now.
And we aren't even half a year into his term.
But sure, pick the few points that didn't happen as justification.
I really do wonder what it feels like to live with ideological blinders on sometimes. Must be a nice feeling to live in reality thats probably happier than what actual reality is.
Which is exactly what Trump is ending with DEI ban.
Trump is actually the president that is making institutional racism illegal.
Regardless of your political persuasion, what's happening to folks here legally is doing irreparable harm to our country's image and standing.
We need researchers to remain competitive. China is putting out more advanced research in key sectors than we are. Most of the papers in AI that I read are from Chinese institutions.
If we think we can compete without immigration, we're going to find ourselves in a world of hurt.
And on the topic of free speech that predicated all of this: it's great that we get so offended by what other people say. It's the litmus test for how free our speech really is. Once we start punishing people for free speech, whatever their ideology or party affiliation may be, the same tactics can be used against us when the political tides turn. If you advocate for free speech and then do something like this, then you're not a free speech advocate.
<< If we think we can compete without immigration, we're going to find ourselves in a world of hurt.
The issue has been gamed well by the political class. It does not help that 'both sides' use language to further confuse the issue and score points with their chosen audiences.
That said, why.. or even how, would an American worker compete on salary. That, you will find, is the source of most of the discontent. That the target of that discontent is amusingly misdirected is quite anothe matter altogether and speaks only to the strength of propaganda apparatus in US.
<< It's the litmus test for how free our speech really is.
True.
<< If you advocate for free speech and then do something like this, then you're not a free speech advocate.
Also true.
This is with the underlying ideal that neither side has the right answers. Which was true back in the era of sane politics.
Except this doesn't really apply anymore, as we know that one side is objectively stupid, and with the modern age, there is zero to none fact checking or social responsibility.
In the same way that there are restrictions to free speech in yelling fire in a crowded movie theater, there absolutely should be restrictions on anything having to do with the popular right talking points, with appropriate jail time, as those fall into the same category now, with people taking Ivermectin for Covid and dying because Joe Rogan told them so.
And if the laws are in place, and the wrong party ever takes charge again and uses those laws against you, that should be a motivator to not let that party take hold in the first place.
When I was young I thought liberties that we viewed as important were something that was provided to all. That it should not matter where you come from. I still think everyone should strive for this.
Please refrain from nonsense HN conspiracy theories. The HN algorithm is and has always been designed to encourage good behavior on the site, favoriting the overall health of discussion on the site over any particular topic and penalizing pages where participants interact poorly. Yes, that means many important topics get automatically downranked because the participants in those topics disagree on the topic strongly enough to engage in upvote/downvote wars and other signals of bad conversational behavior. That is an acknowledged result of the long term algoritm design.
HN has been very clear over the years that their primary goal is for people to debate interesting topics well here, and the overall quality of discussion on HN compared to other sites suggests there is some validity to their approach.
I would not travel to the US any longer, it's just not worth the risk. From the outside it's how I imagined Germany looked in the mid 30s, but streamed live in HD.
For context I'm a white British man, and whilst I wouldn't go out of solidarity and disgust at the treatment of people who don't look and talk like me even if I wasn't worried about myself, right now I would also be seriously concerned for my own safety. I wouldn't trust rogue ICE agents to know exactly what things are permissible on an ESTA visa waiver vs B1 vs B1 in lieu of H1B.
Genuinely and without hyperbole, if you have the ability and means to leave for a different country, you should consider it in case it becomes something you can no longer do in the future; even if you don't believe your government will prevent you, I suspect other countries will start making it a lot more difficult for US citizens to get visas in the coming years.
My mom has booked a multithousand dollar vacation on a cruise set to depart from Florida. They would only be there for a few days.
They are still asking the company to just fly to the first non-US stop and then board. And crazy enough the company might actually accomodate this since hundreds of people have inquired according the agent she talked to.
People really distrust the US government now.
As we Dutch say: trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback.
ackbar03•1h ago