The Trump administration’s new monitoring of social media for visa applicants and visa holders, in particular for international students, has generated vigorous debate over the free speech rights of non-Americans. But some of those most affected by the new policies support the intention of protecting American identity through strict immigration policy.
The State Department in June announced that it “will use all available information in our visa screening and vetting to identify visa applicants who are inadmissible to the United States, including those who pose a threat to U.S. national security,” by “conduct[ing] a comprehensive and thorough vetting, including online presence, of all student and exchange visitor applicants.”
The statement goes on to say that “all applicants for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas will be instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to ‘public,’” declaring that “[e]very visa adjudication is a national security decision.”
Relevant agencies will also “identify all resources that may be used to ensure that all aliens seeking admission to the United States, or who are already in the United States, are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” adding, “particularly those aliens coming from regions or nations with identified security risks.”
Julia Marino, a master’s student at Rollins College in Orlando, Florida, and an F1 visa holder from Brazil, told Minding the Campus that she has had two F1 visas, her current visa and one roughly ten years ago, before the social media crackdown.
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Marino said she believes the Trump administration is “justified” in its new rules pertaining to social media, calling them “not only reasonable but necessary.”
“A country has the same right as a homeowner: you don’t let just anyone walk into your house without knowing who they are and what their intentions might be. It’s about safety,” she explained. “Social media can reveal a lot about a person–their views, their behaviors, and sometimes even dangerous intentions. If someone is openly posting content that’s hateful, anti-Semitic, or connected to terrorism, that’s a serious red flag.”
The Trump administration’s new social media rules follow a sharp increase in campus protests supporting terrorism and anti-Semitic ideologies, which are fueled by radical groups such as Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), as well as first-generation Americans and F1 (non-immigrant student) visa-holding aliens such as Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil.
Scanning the social media of F1 visa applicants aims to halt this concerning trend. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, said that it will “enforce all relevant immigration laws to the maximum degree, to protect the homeland from extremists and terrorist aliens, including those who support antisemitic terrorism, violent antisemitic ideologies, and antisemitic terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or Ansar Allah aka: ‘the Houthis.’”
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services will also conduct “social media vetting for anti-Americanism to consider social media content that indicates an alien endorsing, espousing, promoting, or supporting antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organizations, or other antisemitic or anti-American activity.”
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Trump’s detractors say that the social media monitoring is “un-American.”
The Brennan Center for Justice, for example, reported that the rules “threaten free speech” and fear-monger by inventing hypothetical scenarios by which these new regulations could be abused. In particular, they cite alleged “ambiguity” surrounding the definitions of anti-Semitism and terrorism. Other sources allege that rigorous screening of visa applicants is a source of “anxiety” among international students, likening it to censorship and “strategies used in the Cold War Era” to silence those who criticized the U.S.
But Marino argues that social media monitoring isn’t an act of intolerance at all; it’s a reasonable way to preserve the very values on which America was founded. In fact, she says, it’s intolerant of American values to welcome individuals who seek to overturn them. When asked whether the U.S. government should have the right to vet foreign students based on their principles, Marino didn’t hesitate to say, “Yes, absolutely.”
“If a person doesn’t believe in freedom, democracy, or human rights—which are fundamental American values—then it makes sense they wouldn’t be a good fit to come here,” said Marino.
Marino added that oftentimes people “forget that visas are not a right; they’re a privilege.”
“Whether it’s a work visa, a tourist visa, a marriage visa, or a student visa, you have to earn it and prove that you’ll respect the laws and values of the country,” said Marino. “A visa is essentially permission, and the U.S. has every right to decide who is granted that permission.”
Image: “Sociale media apps” by Ayan.all on Wikimedia Commons
I think this is a bad idea for a very different reason — it’s not Homeland Security that I am worried about having access to the photos and information about people’s children…
The era of the Polaroid in the snailmail is long over — Polaroid is bankrupt and the USPS might as well be. Social media is how people share photos of babies, of children’s cute Halloween costumes and Christmas pageants, and family vacations. Where they share information about which schools their children will be attending this year, what sports they are playing, and all the rest (including the children’s names).
All the stuff your basic child molester needs to know in order to win that child’s confidence.
Homeland Security couldn’t care less that your daughter won the Fourth of July Doll Carriage Contest (a real thing) — but Charlie the Child Molester is going to fantasize about your daughter and you really don’t want him knowing — well, anything about her.
Hence the Social Media Companies (and there’s only a half dozen of them) need to be encouraged to create a new security setting of “Homeland Security” which would be a yes/no setting, and if set to “yes”, Homeland Security could access everything but the public could not — this would do the same thing without helping Charlie the Child Molester, and who really wants to help him?