Say you let someone in who suicide bombs himself and takes out several Americans. Then a reporter asks the DHS spokesperson how they let someone in the country that had "Death to America" posts all over their social media out in the open for everyone to see but they didn't. Nobody would forgive the government for such a grave oversight.
At the airport you already let them check your luggage and pockets to make sure you're not a threat to the crew and passengers. How's it different to be checking your social media before entering to make sure you're not a threat to the citizens?
Which do you think is more important to the electorate, the safety of the citizens, or the privacy inconveniences of immigrants, which doesn't exist anyway?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
To me, this seems like a grave transgression of privacy with little to no actual safety benefits.
People on Visas are guests, it makes sense to ask questions like this that wouldn't ask ordinary citizens. We have been way too relaxed with it and it's nice to see some changes.
It's no different than your local government that's probably happy to permit all sorts of absurd invasive development as long as some engineer puts a stamp on it but if a homeowner wants to build a retaining wall he gets told to f-off and come back with $20k of engineered plans that make the project not worth it.
It's not about the end result. It's about dodging accountability.
So this only provides the government means to oppress and intimidate regular people while having no effect on crime and terror.
Since the leading sentence with the devil's advocate, it's hard to presume the post is mostly sarcastic. If not - the inability to see the difference is rather staggering.
"Yes, 40kg of trinitrotoluene"
I will submit to inspection of the things I bring into a country, but I will not submit to a review of everything I've written that I haven't made public.
It's like asking me to bring decades of letters and personal journals to be judged by. It's unreasonable. If this required of me I won't go.
Do you think the US will see you not going there as a huge loss?
Citizens don't sacrifice anything. The rules applies to those who request visas.
Everything else you wrote after that is so much more delulu, it's not even worth addressing.
Everything is partisan now.
If something bad happens, every media outlet will blame the party they don't like for it somehow. It doesn't matter what that party actually did, therefore there is no value in doing harmful stuff for CYA purposes because deploying the CYA tactics will not stop you from being blamed for it by the outlets that don't like you, and also will not stop the outlets that do you like you from blaming the other party instead of you.
You're making it partisan, I wasn't.
>If something bad happens, every media outlet will blame the party they don't like for it somehow
Ignore the media. If a loved one of yours would be killed by a visa holder who wasn't vetted properly even though his social media profile had all the red flags, who would YOU blame ?
It isn't you or I who decides that, it's media outlets. And they've decided to be partisan.
> If a loved one of yours would be killed by a visa holder who wasn't vetted properly even though his social media profile had all the red flags, who would YOU blame?
The visa holder.
Also, those kinds of social media posts are public, so what does it have to do with immigration? If you want to blame law enforcement for not investigating the nutters who post on the internet then maybe they should start with the ones posting crazy stuff and investigate who they are, instead of starting with random innocent people and unmasking them with no justification.
US Intelligence agencies collect a lot of data about people. Especially the ones who write about "Death to America" on their social media. If we follow your logic and it doesn't happen today then there are bigger problems than the made up issues DHS will have in your imagined future.
Building a profile on someone doesn't require their social media profiles. This is just a bogeyman. As some has pointed out, this is purely to build a case if and when people protest against the government.
As to the sudden insistence on due process when it comes to deportation of illegals I do wonder why this was not an issue when the previous regime let in millions of people without any regard for the laws of the land - i.e. due process. Is it the intention to make it impossible to correct this flagrant violation of migration laws by suddenly insisting on having every single individual go though a lengthy legal process, clogging up the courts?
All of the evidence available to us shows us that migrants, on average, commit less crime than U.S. citizens. The evidence shows us that they pay into social programs without reaping almost any benefit. The evidence shows us that they take jobs that the average American isn't interested in. An evidence-based political program would not target migrants as a first priority, except to provide some more straightforward way to become documented and legal.
The other issue is -- the U.S. has 300 million+ citizens. This argument that migrants will "clog up" the courts seems ridiculous if you also believe U.S. citizens deserve due process. If your court system can't handle a relatively small percentage of your residents committing the crimes you have on the books, then maybe those crimes aren't really serious crimes are they? Or else not funding the courts appropriately to satisfy the political program is purposeful. The goal is to avoid due process and accountability, for citizens and non-citizens alike.
It goes by different names depending on your bias, but it exists. The right side of the political spectrum would call it anarcho-tyranny.
I can't see an easy way to prove someone supplied an incomplete list of online handles though. It would be trivial for me to look up all the places I've supplied my real e-mail address and make sure to include them in the list, and good luck finding my handles otherwise.
1. it doesn't matter - it's immigration, them simply asserting you lied is enough for them to decline your visa, and as of January 2025, enough for them to have masked goons kidnap you on the street and imprison you without charge or trial and/or deport you to some random country
2. the easy way is to just ask American Big Tech to rat you out - Elon obviously would do it for a kind glance, the rest will do it because they either support the actual end of democracy in the US or because they think it'll increase shareholder value
Censorship? Anyone?
Scary times.
e: they downvoted him because they hated the truth.
[1] https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/terrorism/pol...
remember the 400mil$ jet that Trump got from Qatar (and the US attorney general blessed it, having been a consultant for Qatar).
Facebook and others were flooded by images of Clinton receiving a Helicopter from some middle eastern country. and the tag line was 'nobody complained then'.
The 'right' is actually just making up fake images/videos simply to allow them to say 'what about when Clinton did it'. just completely fake.
It was Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine[1] who commented on fear:
> Moore’s central argument emerges as he explores the role of fear in American society and how it relates to gun violence. He suggests that the American government and media perpetuate a culture of fear, which in turn drives people to arm themselves, benefiting gun manufacturers and retailers. To illustrate this point, Moore compares the United States to other countries, particularly Canada, which has a high rate of gun ownership but significantly fewer gun-related deaths.
Perhaps this is just another form of fear: fear of others.
Good thing I have no interest in visiting the land of the "free" anytime soon.
The tr*mp administration seems to think they are inviolable, that they can solve every problem with the military. They'll be caught with their pants down. A $400 drone can now take out a $2B piece of equipment. That waters the mouth of any adversary. A great humbling is coming.
Aren’t you actually arguing for these kind of enhanced vetting measures with this realization?
If anti-US sentiment is high and if the barrier to sabotaging a $2B system is a meager $400…why wouldn’t you do everything you could to prevent people who might be inclined, supportive, or even publicly indifferent to doing your country harm from entering with your blessing?
My attitude is, if you try to get in to the US you must want to be here for some reason. If that reason is to create some form of chaos, I don’t give a shit if you are made more irritated by the process. If your reason is peaceful and this discourages you…I’m sorry, it’s unfortunate, but we have folks that wish us harm and we want to protect everyone best we can…including you, Traveler.
If just being inconvenienced makes you want to harm us, well you are exactly the type of person that should probably be vetted out—and hopefully you were.
This article uses the word "required" but it doesn't give a direct quote saying that it truly is mandatory, it reads a bit waffly.
What if you get flagged because someone else used your username to post stupid things? Will you even be informed of the offending posts and have opportunity to defend yourself?
This requirement doesn’t make any sense.
They are literally saying that only those who lie or have garbage security practices can get Visas.
Yes. And if everyone with a visa has lied on their application, anyone with a visa can be deported at any time when it becomes convenient.
Same with every other abuse of government power. Not that that makes it better.
HN is primarily a news site that allows discussions - I wouldn't classify it as social media. Heck, Reddit barely qualifies as social media for me.
My internal definition is probably two decades out of date, however.
Other than that, your example of using temporary accounts for some secondary platform functionality is yet another reason why this policy is terrible.
When I went to Brazil a few years ago, the basic price for a tourist visa was like $25 and could be done online. But, if you were a US citizen, it cost $150 and you had to schedule an attend an interview in person -- because, those were the costs and burdens placed on Brazilian citizens to apply for a US visa.
Does the US want other countries inspecting our citizens' social media posts for the last five years?
ED: Fix spelling mistake
Take student visas. Sure, you could have a student come to the US, finish their education, and go back to their home country, "stealing" knowledge from the US to benefit their own country. Or they could find a job in the US and/or start the next trillion dollar company since the opportunities in the US are better. Satya Nadella traveled to the US for a university degree and ended up at Microsoft, where he led business units bringing in tens of billions, and under his CEO-ness he increased the value of the MS stock from around $40 when he became CEO in 2014 to $477 today, making it one of the first trillion dollar companies in the US.
But that wouldn't have happened if he didn't get a visa. Neither would Tesla (Elon Musk, migrated from South Africa on a student visa), netiher would Google (Sergey Brin migrated in from Russia, Sundar Pichai migrated on a student visa from India), etc.
I just don't understand it.
This is, of course, immaterial to your main point: we can point to many actual contributions from migrants, such as maintaining infrastructure, providing food and education, and technological advancements.
Yes, it does, it’s called the wealth effect. This is beyond firm effects that stem from lower costs of capital.
That would only be true if the per capita advantage to the US of doing it is at least as large as the per capita disadvantage of having it done to US citizens. Which it isn't. The value of doing it is negligible and the cost of having it done to you is significant.
It's disadvantageous for the US if their citizens have to go through more bullshit whenever they are visiting another country. Regardless of how much they subject people going to the US, or how many people travel either way.
It's a lose lose pissing contest. The reason reciprocity is exercised is to discourage this kind of thing in the first place.
If you want to enter the country illegally, overstay your visa, or perform some sort of attack, then it's trivial to lie on the forms.
It's just making it inconvenient for honest, harmless travellers. Is that the goal?
Very few people will be able to provide a list of 100% of the accounts they used. This means every visitor will technically be lying on their forms.
You're more than happy to visit - until you do something the regime doesn't like, like criticizing the recent attack on Iran, or making fun of the military parade. Then they have a ready-made reason to deport and ban you.
In the interest of truthfulness, I believe all(?) of the CECOT deportations weren't accepted by their own country.
Which doesn't make it right, but does change the situation.
The general vibe I'm hearing in Australia is that people are afraid to travel to the US right now if they have any reason at all to raise suspicion (being trans, having posted political comments, etc).
The check on enforcement excess is that one should always have the option to confer with legal council.
The practice of creating pretextual laws is well established in places like Russia, but a necessary component is proof. In fact that's the entire purpose of a pretextual law, to have something (as ridiculous as it may be) to pin on someone. I can't see any way they could prove I have this handle on Hacker News, for example.
Vote for clowns, live in a circus.
Do you really think the US government cares that much about how Americans are treated outside of the US, or even considers that when setting up these policies? Based on some quick searching and skimming, it seems like only half the population even have passports in the first place.
Did you see the trade war started recently with every country in the world? I don't think anything is being thoroughly planned or thought out in this administration. They're all about power and not governance.
I'm not convinced that this is truly about actually protecting the US from terrorism or foreign attack since all major terrorist acts that I can recall over the last few decades were perpetrated by native-born US citizens and not by visitors on visas.
It seems more about catching people who might have, for example, expressed an opinion that doesn't align with "they deserve it" with respect to Palestinians in Gaza - which currently seems sufficient to be branded "a threat to the US" and grounds for detention and expulsion.
Meanwhile, I think the post you are responding to was pointing out that other countries are likely to reciprocate similar rules for US visitors to their countries.
$18/yr for access to most of the world.
Yet people say "No thanks. I'm sure the US is great."
People who regularly travel internationally are not a large or powerful voter base. They can be shit on without hurting a politician's career.
Also, it's not $18/year like a subscription, it's $165 upfront -- money that could be spent on gas, food, medical bills, desperately saved up for emergencies, etc. and won't provide any benefit whatsoever to their lives unless they're taking a vacation they probably don't feel they can afford financially or in their <2 weeks of vacation time.
That's never an issue from Americans when it is something they want - the country practically runs on loans.
Nearby, we've got Canada and Mexico, and up until pretty recently, you could cross over those borders with a driver's license. And both those countries are big. On the other sides we have oceans. So for most Americans, the minimum cost of an international flight is the same as the cost for a European to fly to the US ($500-$1000), and a full day's travel each way. Here on HN, we might forget that most of the population makes fucking peanuts, so keep in mind that means that for most Americans, $1000 is a lot of money. Most Americans also don't get a lot of time off, so those 2 days of travel are a significant cost in of themselves.
All told, the lack of passports amongst Americans isn't indicative of some isolationist mindset. It's just that they have no need of a passport, because they aren't taking the kinds of extremely far-flung vacations that would need one, and they know if they need one, they can just get one before their trip.
Schengen area
travelling around Europe as European is not much more hassle than moving on the US from one state to the other.
You are required to have a passport (or id) with you (as in, that’s what the law says). Even in your own country. But in your own country a drivers license is usually also sufficient.
But in practice you will almost never be asked to show any of those. In your own country, nor abroad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Supranational_Europea...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurozone
Ireland and Cyprus are in EU & Eurozone but not Schengen; Poland, Hungary (and more) are in EU & Schengen but not Eurozone; Switzerland is in Schengen but neither EU nor Eurozone; Montenegro and Kosovo are in the Eurozone but neither the EU nor Schengen.
I think you just overestimate how common passports are.
Reciprocation is going to be more of the norm than not.
No one is really interested in catering to the US tourist market right now. It’s not even clear if Americans are welcome in many countries, or if they have to pretend being Canadians again.
I don't think this is true, at least where I live (Ireland). I'm pretty sure that the economy of half the coastal towns would collapse without US tourists.
Here are a couple of examples of the challenges in traveling to certain parts of China: https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycletouring/comments/1bdbsh5/
https://www.the-sun.com/travel/14418546/little-known-law-chi...
Not to mention this does nothing to curb outsourcing, which is the next big thing.
Yet another page from the alt-right playbook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dBJIkp7qIg
The state capture by big tech is getting insane. No national ID because privacy and government overreach but sure force everyone to register an account with a private entity that specifically profits by selling your personal information.
I am curious if they'll reject me for not having any active mainstream social media accounts. I suppose I'll find out next year. Might make a few accounts to automate with LLMs and Stable Diffusion with pro-Trump content just in case when I get time on the weekends.
Basically letting people creating astro surfing accounts that only benefit the social media platforms and politics again.
I don't know. The next president might not like that and deny your visa.
Honest question, how would they detect missing info? If they already knew all my social media profiles, they wouldn't need to ask for it. If I wrote some credible threads on any platform, I assume those would have been detected by someone anyway. Also, I surely wouldn't voluntarily disclose the account I used to publish those.
I once got detained for about four hours or so at my destination airport. There were multiple rounds of questioning by persons who seemed rather intelligent and based on what they asked, they did some research about me in the meantime (or wanted to achieve that effect - no idea what tactics those people use). There could have been a few reasons why I was questioned in-depth - maybe it was because of a random spot check, maybe because they considered some stuff in my luggage unusual, maybe because I had work affiliations with people who are routinely questioned when entering some countries due to their work. Who knows.
This was many years ago, so I assume they had to do a lot of their research by hand and there would have been limited other data sources available. I imagine this is rather different today.
Would that be a permanent ban from entering the US?
In American movies dictatorships are portrayed as regimes that are able to control every aspect of their citizen's lives but in real life dictators don't do that. This is why there's the myth among the alt-right about how free Russia is. In real life, only the relevant people are bothered and the rest do whatever they want, say whatever they think. Just don't say it at the wrong place.
USA is going for the US style dystopia and the American dystopia is totalitarian.
I'm sure some will think "This is only for the foreigners, it makes sense to know what they are up to". Once you are done implementing it for foreigners you will want to know what citizens are up to because the rhetoric of these people is not only about the "dangerous aliens among us", they talk about traitor all the time. They will want to know who are those traitors to keep them from infiltrating key positions and you have all kind of traitors already. It's not just national traitor, it's also gender traitors, race traitor, language traitors, fiscal traitors, history traitors, religion traitors, traitor traitors.
The speed of US descending into darkness is scary.
If the federal government were going around asking for citizens social media I'd be more inclined to agree with you. That's not what they're doing though.
Why do you think that it affects only non-citizens?
2) The vaccine mandates were enforced by having employers fire you for failure to comply with it. It was actually pretty terrible.
3) Visa holders are non-citizens by definition.
When I was a kid, I had to have certain vaccines or I couldn't enroll in elementary school. Is that oppressive in your view?
Those are private policies, the vaccine mandate was a federal policy. You said you don't live here, take my word for it, there have been far more oppressive policies.
There was a federal policy (not legislated btw, just an EO for all the people complaining about Trump using EOs to undo previous EOs) that said any company with federal contracts (which is nearly all tech companies in the US, not just defense contractors) must have 100% of its employees vaccinated. It had nothing to do with safety since there was no provision for remote workers.
Keep in mind this was very early on before they had any reasonable amount of time to even test the vaccines. Forced medical intervention like that as a federal policy is far more oppressive than just asking immigrants and vistors for social media handles, there isn't any debate to be had here.
Are you upset with the bureaucratic process? On how exactly was implemented? Like the interaction between the officials? Like on lawyer level stuff?
Citation needed for all of these claims. Please show me this information in the executive order.
> Keep in mind this was very early on before they had any reasonable amount of time to even test the vaccines.
Sorry, the Moderna vaccines were approved under their expedited schedule under the Trump administration in December of 2020.[1] You're complaining about gov't overreach by the same administration as is implementing the above policy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_in_the_Un...
US wants total control, they don't want to be in full know. It's in line with their intelligence gathering practices, it's the American way apparently.
BTW I don't think anyone has ever done a true risk-benefit analysis of such a move, so while it's baseless to say it'll bring any good, it's also baseless to say it'll bring bad. Because realistically, many people going to the US simply don't have an alternative. It'll take decades before Europe decides to hold a meeting to schedule a conversation about improving innovation.
This does not (currently) apply to other non-immigrant or immigrant visas. E.g. If you want to visit as a tourist or for a business meeting (B2 or B1 visa), this is not asked for.
On the topic of scanning social media accounts, it is ripe for abuse by either party in this process. The ones who really want to hide their tracks would already have alt handles that are not connected to their real identities and take precautions to avoid having that happen. Meanwhile, innocent people who just expressed a hot take that was long forgotten may be excluded by knee jerk reactions (who has time for nuance?).
https://ie.usembassy.gov gives 504 so I can't check the primary source, but it seems like the new part is a requirement to make accounts public and applies only to F, M, and J student and exchange visas.
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Enhanced%20Vettin...
F*ck em. America was built on imported foreign talent, and these stupid games will win stupid in the long term.
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nullfield•5mo ago
Setting everything to “public”, likewise, has potential implications far beyond a visa, since scraping can happen real fast. Then, things on the Internet live like… more than forever, potentially resurfacing later.
That could be a potential employer, romantic interest, etc.—and just consider how things from 10-20 years ago have already resurfaced for some high-profile individuals, under some new social cause or just attitude change. The same thing can happen to any of us under these circumstances, ready to ruin lives.
oneeyedpigeon•5mo ago
mihaaly•5mo ago
That time we did not have to worry about setting everything public, we figured US officials will have access regardless, if they really want to. ;)