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.
Turning away troublemakers is a smart thing to do. There are more than enough talented people waiting in line. People who will not shout down professors, occupy university buildings and protest against the government of the country that received them as guests.
Challenging authority is a requirement of progress - if you can't criticize the system how can you dream of improving it?
here's the article: https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/03/4ftk27sm6jkj.
It leaves me with a lot of questions.
What even constitutes a social media profile? For how long do you have to mark it public? What if marking all your social media profiles public exposes you to harm? Is it acceptable to delete all your posts (that were previously _private_) before making a profile public, or to delete whole profiles, or would that desire for privacy be seen as concealing some threat? How is it known if there are non-public profiles? Would govt believe somebody who has no social media presence at all?
"screening visa applicants for threats" is a very simplistic summary of the situation. I think visa applicants are just gonna go eleswhere.
School shootings are not typically classified as "terrorism" unless they are explicitly motivated by political, ideological or religious agendas.
Foreign-sponsored terrorist attacks, such as 9/11, San Bernardino shooting, Pulse nightclub shooting, etc result in significantly higher casualties, widespread fear and greater economic impact (in the $trillions). Foreign actors are typically more sophisticated, thus calling for enhanced screening. And their actions have further-reaching consequences such as the cost of wars and homeland security measures.
"To apply for a visa, applicants need to give us (and the rest of the world) access to all email correspondence."
No one is complaining about screening for threats. It's how that's a problem.
And, we must acknowledge the obvious: such authoritarian rules and requirements rely on benevolence. Meaning, if your leader and border agents are good people, then this isn't a problem.
Well... are they? I say no, so now this is a problem that didn't exist previously.
They also don't say "Hey, this phone you gave me doesn't have any photos. You must have backed them up elsewhere and are hiding them from me. I'm denying entry."
In other words, they don't say "Hey, bring all the photos you ever took."
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.
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.
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.
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 =)
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.
The idea that academia makes money for the US, or brings in highly educated people to contribute to our economy, or produces scientific advancements that improve society is completely immaterial to the goal.
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).
Of course, the US wanted them out for other reasons, but this is the simplest charge to bring against them.
Heard of software?
I guess I don’t really believe Palantir’s marketing?
It’s hard not to see this as another “freedom of speech (but only for the kind of speech we like)” situation.
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.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "
Note the wording. It's not in the business of granting rights (those are natural and inalienable). It restricts Congress's ability to pass any law that infringes upon those rights.
Withholding a visa by a government due to political statements is retaliation and retaliation is a method of suppressing someone’s free speech.
There was case a while back where a border patrol agent in Texas shot a person in Mexico. No ability sue.
The constitution only restricts the government (some exceptions), and is therefore unusually silent in where the government isn’t the government.
This is unfortunate, because the US government absolutely operates in foreign countries.
It is an insane case, but for different reasons.
And DOGE will have access to the client list so they can share it with ICE.
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.
When the United States was founded, the average nation was some flavor of monarchy.
And unlike in the US they actually do enforce the laws there.
Isn't Japan famously safe and clean?
Man, Japan is really missing out here. They should listen to the wealthy western champagne liberals on HN who are outspokenly pro mass migration and yet spend most of their income to live in homes as far as possible from cities impacted by mass immigration, usually in majority-white suburbs with good safe schools and manicured lawns.
Edit: answering here to your comment below. Which statistics are you referring to? And why is resorting to the Hitler card on people who disagree with you your only argument? Let's address your vile accusations with facts from experts:
"Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings."[1]
It's certainly a purely theoretical fate. I have zero reason to believe undocumented people are more dangerous than citizens. I mean, intuitively, they risk so much more - namely deportation and torture. If I followed a Republican philosophy of tough on crime, I would then say they must be committing less crime.
Do we have any reason to believe they're more dangerous? And I mean real reasons, like statistics. No Patrick, "they're vaguely brown" is not a real reason. No Patrick, "homogeneous population" isn't a real reason either.
That's a really different thing than one million people illegally entering the country and expecting that to just work out. Can you imagine the response Japan would have if a million Americans crossed into Japan illegally and expected to live and work there?
Bingo. So why are some western countries supposed to tolerate this?
Sure, but this isn't my point. Nobody has given me any reason to believe it won't work out, included our undocumented immigrants. I live in Texas, I should be seeing the worst of it. But uh... no... everything is pretty chill here. Not really seeing any of these doomerist complaints about those darn illegals.
> Can you imagine the response Japan would have if a million Americans crossed into Japan illegally and expected to live and work there?
I sure can, it would probably be piss-poor. Because Japan has a strong ethnic identity and community-oriented culture. We don't.
We're not Japan, nor do we really want to be Japan.
Nation wide policies and society don't work on how your own chill vibe feels where you live, but on research, statistics and most importantly on the opinions of the democratic majority.
You're cherry picking and assuming they only look for obvious criminal offences like "government overthrow" and not dissenting views, criticism of the people in power, views against the economic order, etc. For some of those I can imagine the answer being "no" in Japan and "Yes" in the US.
This administration already considers protesting genocide a “threat to national security”. It has a well documented history of retaliating against protected speech. This latest policy is authoritarian retaliation against of free speech, plain and simple. Comparing the policy of a liberal democracy like Japan to contemporary US authoritarianism is truly disingenuous.
You fail to address, though, that 1- the US is requiring social media accounts to be set to public, forcing people's hand into being labled as aggitators. 2- stuff that might be of academic interest is notoriously targeted by this admin, like any research being done on Israel/Palestine, any research being done on ESG, not to mention the more overt leftist themes (pro-LGBT, abortion, etc academics). This change is an easy way for the admin to target this type of research
The US was built on immigration; Japan never was -- it has always been anti-immigration. There's no Statue of Liberty with "give me your huddled masses" inscription.
These harsh actions go against the principles on which the US was founded and built. Similar actions in Japan do not go against the principles on which Japan was founded.
A separate conversation, but immigration -- legal or illegal -- greatly benefits the US economically. While conversely, Japan's immigration policies are greatly hurting its economy as its population declines.
I'm not pro- illegal immigration. I'm for making legal immigration much more accessible so that you don't end up with millions of illegal immigrants.
Edit: I know. It's just a convenient foil!
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.
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.
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.
Seems like instead of making it easier for smart and talented people to come to US, we are making it harder... cause terrorism?
Lots of discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44314054
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.
rcbdev•7mo ago
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.
MinimalAction•7mo ago
duxup•7mo ago
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•7mo ago
Am I off-base here, or is this exactly what is happening?
ThunderBee•7mo ago
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•7mo ago
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•7mo ago
Here's a decent summary of how some of these censorship doors were opened: https://www.acsh.org/news/2024/02/25/covid-censorship-yes-bi...
There are also more vivid and recent examples, like barring universities from divestment from Israel (ie, 0]), which has happened in quite a few 'blue' states. Not to mention sending in armed police (ie, [1]) to break up peaceful anti-genocide protests.
0 - https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-israel-gaza-campus-p...
1 - https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-campus-p...
spacemadness•6mo ago
mandmandam•6mo ago
maeil•7mo ago
> If anyone would care to educate me on this, with evidence, I am here for it.
Sure, happy to. I'll focus on the "internet" part. There was mass censorship on the major US social media platforms during COVID in the name of "preventing racist attacks against East-Asians". This is widely documented and admitted.
Yishan Wong, ex-Reddit CEO:
> Example: the "lab leak" theory (a controversial theory that is now probably true; I personally believe so) was "censored" at a certain time in the history of the pandemic
That Meta and Twitter banned accounts for discussion of it is easily verifiable, Wikipedia also banned discussion of it.
In Twitter's case, they even had a CCP figure on their board of directors during this time [1][2].
[1] - https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/3940206
[2] - https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/home/2020/5/25/twitters-new...
nwienert•7mo ago
So many times I’ve opted to not refute things because I know it’ll be downvoted to oblivion, and because the community at large doesn’t care to change their views in the slightest.
It’s good for tech news.
maeil•7mo ago
It's very unfortunate that all I received was downvotes, without a single substantial reply as to what would be particularly incorrect about the observations I made. This does indeed seem to stem from infallibility tribalism: "I identify with group A, so literally anything that can be taken as pointing out a flaw of group A is an attack on me as a person".
At the same time, this isn't a particular hallmark of the left; it's even worse on the right. In any right-dominated space, my comment, if the roles were swapped, would simply have been instantly removed rather than just being downvoted. r/conservative is a very prime example. Twitter is another one, having become much more eager to instantly abide by requests from foreign autocratic regimes to remove/ban accounts that oppose them after the Musk takeover.
I do wonder if you're going to downvote me for this comment, reaching a new "irony level" world record :)
nwienert•6mo ago
And I'd never downvote something that's not entirely dumb as long as it's written in good faith.
consumer451•6mo ago
That is the advertising. Meanwhile, the reality is the the US right is banning books in school libraries, telling people what they can do with their bodies to the point of needless deaths, requiring lie detector tests for hiring in the FBI where the question is "do you harbor any bad feelings about the boss?" The Speaker of the House just stated that "separation of church as state is a myth." I could go on and on.
As a lifelong independent, to me the above disconnection from the advertising and reality is the biggest reason that I can plainly see that pledging allegiance or alignment to any political party leads to the death of one's critical thinking abilities in that space.
nwienert•6mo ago
All the things you listed imo are either extremely marginal or not an issue at all, especially compared to the lefts recent antics. Then again, I was pretty left leaning until I lived in SF, which quickly dissuaded me of it, along with the American left moving pretty far leftward. 15 years ago I guess id be considered somewhat left leaning even still.
consumer451•6mo ago
Talk to me of specific policies. (I mean this in general, not you specifically.)
Everything else is high school football-style fandom (my team vs. your team) used divide and conquer us.
intended•7mo ago
This setup has been constantly improved, to the point that Intelligent Design could successfully be held up along side the theory of evolution in American media - BEFORE the internet made itself felt.
There is an asymmetric media failure at play, and the idea that “both sides” have the same faults, allows this failure to persist, because it drastically downplays the propaganda machine that operates on the right of the content economy.
This is not an opinion, this is an open secret, as the people within the right wing ecosystem may as well be entirely captured. “Network Propaganda” does a better job of making the case, and should be required reading for most tech people interested in the market place of ideas.
UncleMeat•7mo ago
"If only students didn't complain when Milo Yiannopoulos got invited to campus, the Trump administration wouldn't be kicking out (or imprisoning) international students based on their political beliefs, rejecting papers about gay people from conferences at military academies, and imposing quotas for hiring reactionaries." Is that the claim?
spacemadness•7mo ago
saghm•7mo ago
I agree with you, but I also think it would be unfortunate to frame this as somehow the responsibility of those who would be suffering the risk to come here to combat this. As much as I'd love for people to come just to stick it to the current government, I honestly think it's probably a better idea for them to prioritize their own safety and security over trying to fight against it. The rest of the world doesn't owe it to us to fix our mess for us.