When 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.
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
> 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!
Filling out paperwork for a security clearance long ago had two questions about "have you ever been a member of a group dedicated to the overthrow of the us government, if yes explain". The next question was about being an officer in such a group.
I always enjoyed that question in that there was a two line explanation field :)
I assume that was similar in that it's there to catch a lie (possibly just after the fact / legal leverage) ... not really find anything out with that question at that moment.
That'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.
Am I a terrorist or have I ever sympathized with them? Does singing old IRA songs after a couple of pints of Guinness count? If so, it's well I'm not filling out a DS-160.
They’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.
"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.
> 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.
And the Trump administration has leapfrogged all of the 'asking' on 1st amendment issues -- they're actively suing news stations, entering shake-down agreements with colleges about what they're allowed to teach, deporting green card holders for their political opinions, cancelling already-awarded research grants based purely on the topic being studied ... anyone pretending like this is remotely comparable to anything that happened under Biden isn't a serious person.
Freedom of speech is protected against government limitations, in the US. Not against private parties' editorial or moderation roles. And even against government suppression there are numerous limits, including for example fraud, incitement, and threats.
The same administration "defending" free speech rights in your view has taken an exceptionally stringent view against political speech, particularly against university campuses, and has sued multiple journalistic organisations, including the BBC, ABC News, the Des Moines Register, CBS 60 Minutes, Simon & Schuster, and CNN:
I 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)
> 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.
A 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.
> 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.)
I 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.
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).
My 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.
This 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.
Countries 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”.
If 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.
India is also very nepotistic and it might well be Indian managers already present in the US pushing for entry of their relatives, schoolmates and friends.
No 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.
Hopefully 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.
Hosted some Japanese study-abroad students over Thanksgiving (they often have no where to go over break). A few times when I suggested an activity they asked if it was "safe". Like taking an Amtrak train. Seeing the "Walk of Stars" in Los Angeles.
It was sad to realize that they viewed the U.S. as so dangerous. But I can say for certain that I feel I could walk around Tokyo at night and not have a worry in the world. From time to time I am embarrassed by the U.S.
FWIW, this isn't new. I was an exchange student in Osaka in the early 90's and a girl in my class got picked for an exchange program in Canada and she said she was relieved she didn't have to worry about being shot.
My stepmother taught in eastern Africa at the beginning of the 1960s. When she was getting ready to return to the US, her students collectively expressed their concern at her returning to such a dangerous place.
Don'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".
Yeah, 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.
When my dad remarried, my stepmother was a citizen of a different country, does that retroactively make me no longer a "heritage American"? If they had had kids, would my hypothetical half-sibling be a "heritage American"? If the answer is "no", would it change anything if I told you they would have been (like me) descended from a long line of US citizens going back to the 1790s?
Or actually now that I think about it, my mom, who as a child knew her great-grandma, a Norwegian immigrant, wouldn't count as a "heritage American".
> When my dad remarried, my stepmother was a citizen of a different country, does that retroactively make me no longer a "heritage American"? If they had had kids, would my hypothetical half-sibling be a "heritage American"?
No, because of the ties to a foreign country through your stepmother.
> Or actually now that I think about it, my mom, who as a child knew her great-grandma, a Norwegian immigrant, wouldn't count as a "heritage American".
No, although if it's only one great-grandmother among 8 I'm not super worried about your mom being more loyal to Norway than the US. Also realistically Norway today has many of the same issues with culturally-foreign immigrants that the US does, so maybe that wouldn't amount to all that much in the unlikely case that your mom did strongly identify with Norwegian cultural norms.
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.
Since 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.
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%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
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