Social media posts have been scrubbed, list of people have been prepared, just a matter of cross-checking whether they are non-citizens and can be deported
People are already spread too thin to revolt anyway, the billionaire masters made sure of that by lowering wages until people were just near enough the poverty line that losing their job would mean ruin. Can't go protest if you have to put food on the table. Now you also have to worry not to be taken out of your community and sent to a random 3rd country. I bet that makes people be quiet real quick. I bet we'll see a widening of what's un-acceptable by the administration.
It's unsuprising theres a mix of nazis and israelis at the helm of America's "self interest" and there's criminals, child molestors, rapists constantly being squeezed out.
Targeting H1b would also result in much stronger legal opposition. It takes a year to process less than 100k H1B applications annually, and companies have to pay thousands processing fees for each one. The goal of this is to discourage foreign students, refugee claimants and tourist visa holders from coming to America.
I think legally it is possible since Supreme Court decisions are applied retroactively in general (just not the existing EO one because the EO was forward looking), but that would be super unpopular since it’s basically a huge rug pull and I’m skeptical they would do it.
Since it is, in fact, already happening, I think it is a mistake to view it as something to worry about only if and when the administration succeeds in overturning birthright citizenship.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/06/30/nx-s1-5445398/denaturalizatio...
[1] https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/trump-administration-seek...
I didn’t read GP as being worried specifically about convicted criminals.
No.
Denaturalization is a civil process that does not require a criminal conviction, and the people that have been denaturalized are not always convicted criminals.
(Denaturalization usually involves an allegation that could also be pursued as a crime, such as fraud against the government, but that's very much not the same as it applying only to convicted criminals.)
This current administration wants to end interventionism which means the old US (100% white/all Protestant) might be coming back. If you are not in that category you must start planning accordingly.
Ha. Getting German citizenship has become easier, but it's still far from automatic, and at least the way things have been the past 100 years or so, I (native-born to native-born US citizens in the US, white) would have to jump through a lot of hoops to get rid of my US citizenship.
In Holland we've had some war criminals (Dutch collaborators) that leisurely lived out their lives in Germany because they received citizenship through SS membership as thanks for their war crimes. And Germany doesn't extradite its own citizens. Also they stalled local prosecution until the people in question were too old and frail to stand trial.
I really don't understand how the western world let them get away with doing that. Every SS-derived citizenship should have been instantly revoked in 1945, all wartime laws retracted and citizens with wartime crimes extradited.
Source (sorry in Dutch) https://duitslandinstituut.nl/artikel/174/hoe-duitsland-met-...
No democracy for enemies of democracy.
One thing to consider is how easy is to make minor mistakes that technically count as an infraction. When acting in good faith, the administration can acknowledge this and promptly fix it, as it happened to me during my immigration process.
Then there are random mistakes out of your control. For example, when I first moved to the US and tried to get insurance for my car, I received extremely high quotes from the insurer. When I inquired why, they replied that my file showed several traffic infractions years ago in a different state. Simply clarifying that they'd mistaken me for another person was enough to fix it. Imagine if instead they deported me to a prison in El Salvador without a chance to defend myself.
And this is not talking shadier practices, such as changing the rules so that certain things suddenly become offenses, or simply fabricating evidence against someone.
I had no idea it was that many.
I thought 18M undocumented was a high %age!
342M people in the US. 16% visa holders
I wonder how that compares to other countries?
https://www.census.gov/popclock/
https://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born/about....
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...
I thought 18M undocumented was a high %age!
Seems inflated. Reliable estimates run around 2/3 of that. Higher numbers always seem anchored only by handwavey 'there must be more because reasons', which is why you regularly see people claiming sums of 20m, 30m, 40m. The current president has a habit of picking arbitrary numbers based on his feelings, but that doesn't sem a very reliable system to me.
https://ohss.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/2024_0418_o...
There are 55m visas, majority of which are non immigrant visas.
My point being, this distinction may not mean what it might appear with a layman’s or dictionary based understanding of the phrase “non-immigrant visa”.
I know a few people with two visas - an I visa for work and a B1 for tourism
75% of non immigrant visas are normal tourist/business visa you need to go to a trade show in vegas or go to Disneyland.
The H category was under 10% of non immigrant visas.
Seems relevant since a lot of tech ppl are on visa
The real question is: why don’t people want to talk about it? I’ve found it typically falls into three camps:
One group flags these kinds of stories because they’re exhausted, and can’t stomach any more. I feel bad for this group, and I understand the impulse.
Another group flags because suppressing information about what the administration is up to aligns with their personal ideology. This is the more dangerous group, and I’m always sad to see people coming out in support of awful stuff like this.
The last group flags it because it annoys them, and they don’t want to engage with it. It makes them uncomfortable and they feel it doesn’t impact them. They point to the HN guidelines and say it’s not relevant. It is, they’re just lucky enough to have not been affected personally by anything yet.
I pity the last group, honestly.
Seems far fetched, if anything H1B are limited BECAUSE of the H1B cap/lottery system
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I can't help but feel that stories like these fall under "off-topic".
It's extensively covered by mainstream media and it's unrelated to tech other than the few individuals that have a visa that's relevant here. Does this article really "gratify one's intellectual curiosity"?
The admin makes it clear, if you have opposing views and share them, you're not welcome here.
From AIPAC themselves: (https://www.aipacpac.org/)
> Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics.
> %98 of AIPAC-backed candidates won their general elections.
> $70M contributed through AIPAC to support pro-Israel candidates.
> We helped defeat 24 candidates who would have undermined the US-Israel relationship.
Democracy anybody?
Now imagine Russia had a similar organization, what would the reaction be? Yet when it's Israel, it's somehow fine.
From Wikipedia: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPAC)
> AIPAC was founded in 1954 by Isaiah L. Kenen, a lobbyist for the Israeli government, partly to counter negative international reactions to Israel's Qibya massacre of Palestinian villagers that year.
How long can support for this last?
How much of that surveillance was kept I wonder? I don't consider it unimaginable that someone would get expelled for saying something on WhatsApp 15 years ago.
I heard Mexico even has a deal with the US that they refuse entry to other latam visitors that they deem suspicious to avoid them going to the US via its land border. This is what a Colombian friend said. Not sure how true though.
I'm not going to go to a country that eyes me with suspicion. Especially because I'm very LGBT friendly too.
From the article:
The review of all visa holders appears to be a significant expansion of what had initially been a process focused mainly on students who have been involved in what the government perceives as pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel activity.
Officials say the reviews will include all visa holders’ social media accounts, law enforcement and immigration records in their home countries, along with any actionable violations of U.S. law committed while they were in the United States.
The reviews will include new tools for data collection on past, present and future visa applicants, including a complete scouring of social media sites made possible by new requirements introduced earlier this year. Those make it mandatory for privacy switches on cellphones and other electronic devices or apps to be turned off when an applicant appears for a visa interview.
andsoitis•5mo ago
anigbrowl•5mo ago
https://x.com/BoFrenchTX/status/1958611053119775213
stevenwoo•5mo ago
immibis•5mo ago
slt2021•5mo ago
Israeli people need to read the 1st Amendment that we have in the US
immibis•5mo ago
anigbrowl•5mo ago
As a side note, Israel isn't a US state the last time I looked. I doubt that a blanket ban on political expression could survive a first amendment challenge.
andsoitis•5mo ago
The law is clear that if you support a terrorist group, your visa application can be denied or your current visa revoked.
If we take Hamas for example, they are designated a terrorist group by: European Union, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Paraguay, United Kingdom, United States, Organization of American States, Switzerland[1]
If you are in the US on a non-immigrant visa (you are a guest) and you go to a rally in support of Hamas, I struggle to understand why it would be controversial that the US can revoke your visa ("your permission to be in the US").
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_g...
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•5mo ago
What does "support" mean in this context?
andsoitis•5mo ago
1) financial (e.g. donations, membership fees, investments)
2) human resources (e.g. volunteers, staffing, training)
3) material & in-kind (e.g. equipment, office space, supplies)
4) knowledge & expertise (e.g advisory, R&D, workshops, training)
5) networking & partnerships (e.g. collaboration, referrals, advocacy alliances)
6) policy & institutional (applies to governments, not individuals, so not relevant "in this context")
7) community & social (e.g. public awareness, volunteer mobilization, cultural legitimacy)
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•5mo ago
andsoitis•5mo ago
Yes, here is the nuance, which I concur with and I would hope most reasonable people could agree on.
In practice, protests are a mix of people but onlookers take a binary stance. It is not going to be difficult to see at protest a poster or cameras capture someone shouting something like "globalize the infitada! or or death to America".
Complicating matters further, protest organizers and the protesters themselves have more of a fluid behavior and motivations - it is not a club where membership is controlled and patrolled, a protest's mission is usually a little vague and fluid, etc.
And that is, I think, where the real risk lies - you are at a protest and you can find yourself surrounded by others who ARE supporting Hamas even if you're not and you get lumped together.
This happens on "the right" as well. You'll have some Neo-Nazi's in a conservative protest against XYZ, and now all of a sudden they're all Nazi's.
It is deeply unfortunate.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•5mo ago
This is incredibly dubious. Not only the idea that I would find myself around any number of people explicitly supporting Hamas but also the idea that I would be confused as being part of them. (Like, I can just walk away and tell others that I disagree with the dumb shit they're saying.) People are told not to say dumb shit at the protests I go to; anyone saying something explicitly pro-violence is an obvious agitator.
> This happens on "the right" as well. You'll have some Neo-Nazi's in a conservative protest against XYZ, and now all of a sudden they're all Nazi's.
This is not an equivalent comparison. It's not like there's a grassroots movement of Hamas sympathizers in America that have inspired songs to be written about them. But neo-Nazis... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYKAQZUAbHU
But don't you think it's at least a little bit telling that you automatically jump to neo-Nazis showing up at "conservative protests"? What makes the protest "conservative" and why do you present it as a truism that such an event would appeal to neo-Nazis? One might assume that the neo-Nazis are loudly told to FUCK OFF when they show up... well, anywhere, a "conservative protest" included, but one would also imagine that they'd eventually stop showing up to such events, at least not openly as neo-Nazis. It seems like they keep showing up to them because they are welcome at them.
andsoitis•5mo ago
Counter evidence from, for example, 2024 news report: “Pro-Hamas group that helped organize college protests is a 'sham charity,' Treasury says”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/-hamas-group-helped-org...
slt2021•5mo ago
Only material support for terror group (fundraising and sending $$$ to people in the OFAC list)
andsoitis•5mo ago
boston_clone•5mo ago
Stop bullshitting people here.
0. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/deporting-in...
UncleMeat•5mo ago
I'm very sorry but advocating for not bombing hospitals in Gaza is not "supporting a terrorist group."
andsoitis•5mo ago
I don't think we disagree on this.
In practice, protests are a mix of people but onlookers take a binary stance. It is not going to be difficult to see at protest a poster or cameras capture someone shouting something like "globalize the infitada! or or death to America".
Complicating matters further, protest organizers and the protesters themselves have more of a fluid behavior and motivations - it is not a club where membership is controlled and patrolled, a protest's mission is usually a little vague and fluid, etc.
And that is, I think, where the real risk lies - you are at a protest and you can find yourself surrounded by others who ARE supporting Hamas even if you're not and you get lumped together.
This happens on "the right" as well. You'll have some Neo-Nazi's in a conservative protest against XYZ, and now all of a sudden they're all Nazi's.
It is deeply unfortunate.
JumpCrisscross•5mo ago
The test may not be arbitrary. How the test was chosen is. A CAPTCHA is an objective test; forcing everyone in high school to take one is arbitrary.
(Also, to my knowledge, mere attendance wouldn’t constitute a lawful reason to eject. Material support would have to have been offered, e.g. fundraising for Hamas.
andsoitis•5mo ago
Let's take The Netherlands as an example to get a feel.
- Pronouncement of undesirability: https://ind.nl/en/pronouncement-of-undesirability
- Entry bans: https://ind.nl/en/entry-ban
If you have ever had to apply for a Schengen Visa to enter the EU, then you will know how strict the EU is (even hotels want to see your passport and record it).
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•5mo ago
andsoitis•5mo ago
Ah, we're not talking about the same thing.
I drew the comparison to The Netherlands' list of reasons for why they would revoke or deny your VISA (which is what the article is about w.r.t. the US), and it is not dissimilar.
I wasn't contrasting ease of immigration between the two countries. It is a mixed bag, but for educated immigrants the it is generally easier to immigrate to The Netherlands than the US (if you are doing so outside the law, I'm going to guess it is much easier "to make it work" in the US than in The Netherlands - both in terms of getting in but also to make a living). There are some notable barriers like you cannot have dual citizenship (the US allows). On the other hand, demand for immigration to the US is much higher, which, together with more arcane and byzantine regulations result in other structural barriers.
boston_clone•5mo ago
> Nothing really to see here. Normal course of business [...]
And now you're shifting your position by saying "well, its more difficult elsewhere so this must be fine".
You shouldn't worry, though - as long as the visa holders support the KKK and not a free Palestine, they can stay.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•5mo ago
> well, its more difficult elsewhere so this must be fine
I don't see a difference between these. The "more difficult elsewhere" in the supposedly shifted goalposts is the "normal course of business" in the first comment.
boston_clone•5mo ago
Changing our policies to make the process more chaotic is not our normal course of business, nor is it “nothing to see” as it will directly affect people.
I feel that both of those are plainly evident.
andsoitis•5mo ago
FWIW, part of my engagement is to try to understand the real risk vs. alarmism (i.e. as reported).
My understanding is that the material change is that there is somewhat more leeway for the government to interpret what it means to be "to be of good moral character".
You should know that when you apply for citizenship, for example, they have for many years asked you about traffic violations, which, theoretically have always been allowable as input in deciding "of good moral character".
Another is whether you have ever supported the Communist Party or been involved in prostitution, and a whole host of other things. Check out page 14 ("General Eligibility and Inadmissability Grounds") on the form: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-4...
I have not read the actual policy change, so I don't know whether it has actually changed or whether it is just being more rigorously applied AND/OR targeted (biased) more.
If you can articulate it precisely, that would be nice for all of us here since the article is not sufficiently objective or illuminating.
boston_clone•5mo ago
Strongly agree - how nice would it be if this administration cared enough to do just that?
In any case, your understanding is severely incorrect; please read the second half of the article. Here are some helpful paragraphs:
>The administration has steadily imposed more restrictions and requirements on visa applicants, including requiring them to submit to in-person interviews. The review of all visa holders appears to be a significant expansion of what had initially been a process focused mainly on students who have been involved in what the government perceives as pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel activity.
>Officials say the reviews will include all visa holders’ social media accounts, law enforcement and immigration records in their home countries, along with any actionable violations of U.S. law committed while they were in the United States.
>The reviews will include new tools for data collection on past, present and future visa applicants, including a complete scouring of social media sites made possible by new requirements introduced earlier this year. Those make it mandatory for privacy switches on cellphones and other electronic devices or apps to be turned off when an applicant appears for a visa interview.
So, looks like we have intentional ambiguity coupled with mass surveillance. Do you not see how that is problematic?
> [...] the article is not sufficiently objective.
Might there be some confusion between objectivity and your own bias? Playing the innocent enlighted centrist about immigration policies this far in to 2025 seems either wildly ignorant or dangerously veiled.
Here are some links from several months ago for understanding and "engagement":
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/deporting-in...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-scraps-guidance-limit...
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/06/27/dhs-terminates-haiti-tps...
andsoitis•5mo ago
This is NOT new. In most cases, in-person interviews have always been required at a US embassy or consulate abroad. I know this not only from personal experience but you can also double check if you don't believe me: https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://travel.s...
There are certain exceptions:
- interview waivers: certain applications may qualify to skip, e.g. children under 14, adults 80+, some renewing applications
- certain visa categories: diplomats and some official travelers.
That said, US consular officers have always had the discretion to require an interview even if you might otherwise qualify for a waiver.
>Officials say the reviews will include all visa holders’ social media accounts, law enforcement and immigration records in their home countries, along with any actionable violations of U.S. law committed while they were in the United States.
Do you object to all of these or only some? I can see objecting to social media account review, but surely actionable violations of US law committed while in the US any reasonable person can agree that that can be cause for denying or revoking your VISA. Surely?
boston_clone•5mo ago
https://www.visalawyerblog.com/trump-administration-limits-i...
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•5mo ago
"Nothing to see here" (even referring to the title alone) is the hard to defend position and when that's called out as ridiculous they say that they were just talking about the actually normal things that countries do for immigration, which nobody is going to argue with.
The end goal being for the "nothing to see here" that everybody is looking at to become normal.
LargoLasskhyfv•5mo ago
_fs•5mo ago
ux266478•5mo ago
aiauthoritydev•5mo ago
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