There's all sorts of stuff wrong with this, but why is an agent giving them a "hot or not" rating?
Surely that can't be the only thing necessary to flag them based on their social media posts. As using here as an example, I down vote things I meant to upvote or vice versa constantly. Imagine being denied a visa based on that.
Which makes it more likely that whatever prevalence of false positives are ignored as long as false negatives are kept low. Meaning that people without recourse are affected disproportionally by something they have no control over.
The position of the US is that everyone coming to the US is intending to move here permanently, and any sort of visitation visa will be _denied by default_ from many countries unless you can prove otherwise, and the hoops they make you go through can be ridiculous. I talked to someone from Colombia who waited years for a visa interview, spent weeks preparing for it and got denied 5 minutes into the call because they didn't have enough money in the bank at home. No appeal. All they wanted to do is visit their brother for a week. They hadn't seen him for years.
Yeah, that's terrible. Now imagine they checked the bank, found they had "enough" money, then denied them entry because they accidentally clicked the wrong button.
The policy is often bullshit, but following it and still being denied would be infuriating.
And that's one of the major concerns with tools like these. Besides the conceptual problems of spying on people's musings, when's the last time a heavily marketed "AI" tool turned out to be at all accurate?
It's one thing for the government to spy on your social media postings and decide you're a risk to the country, it's a whole 'nother thing for that to be an error because you posted about that "killer" concert or how a movie is "the bomb".
Given what we know of government contractors and their inflated claims about AI my bet is that this tool - however justifiable or not in its use - doesn't even actually work as advertised.
> "The government should not be using algorithms to scrutinize our social media posts and decide which of us is 'risky.'
This article isn't super clear about what agencies are using this for what purposes, beyond looking at visa applicants, but visa applicants aren't US citizens and aren't in the US, so they don't have the same set of rights that citizens do, nor should they.
Are you aware that citizens within 100 miles of borders including Great Lakes are ok for border patrol to spy on, have their vehicles searched without warrant, etc?
That area covers over 65% of the total US population btw
That’s because that information is not available. The ACLU is working on finding that. The law applies to every one equally on US soil. Visa applicants can often be located in the US so they would have standing in a US court.
Does this even have to be a citizenship issue? The DHS is providing evidence that could alter the judgement of many of these people's cases. Do you have to be American to request that evidence be vetted? If anything, one wrong algo and you can re-open or close buckets of cases at once.
Since 9/11, one cannot apply for a US visa if they’re in US. In the context of US immigration, “visa” grants entry, “status” grants stay. If you’re in US, and need to change “status” to a different category (business/leisure, student, etc), you have two primary choices: (1) apply for “change of status” in US, or (2) leave US, apply for a new “visa” in the new category, and enter US using that new “visa”.
Thank you! Many people comment without realizing this.
Your entry into the states (visa) and your stay (status) in the states are two completely different things. When you enter with a visa, the CBP officer note your status and its validity date on your I-94.
All a visa does is afford you the opportunity to present yourself at the port of entry and request to enter, it bears no guarantee nor right to enter.
> so they don't have the same set of rights that citizens do, nor should they
I take issue with the "nor should they" aspect of what you said. While I'm aware it's not a binding document, the United States [1] claims that these rights should be inalienable. This, to me, would imply that these rights should apply to everyone.
Obviously this gets into more nebulous territory if the person isn't within the states, but I still fundamentally think the right to free speech should apply.
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights
I'm not religious, so I don't believe in a "creator" in the most literal sense, but doesn't this imply that (from the government's perspective) that these rights were given by God, and cannot be taken away by a government?
Again, I'm aware that the declaration is not a legally binding document, but I feel like it symbolizes the ideals of what the US was supposed to be.
perhaps it means that "some aspects of (human) life on Earth are recognized as fundamental -- by definition they are beyond politics, and beyond any current versions of laws in any written human language" so .. the US Constitution is saying explicitly (using words including diety) .. we recognize that human law is not enough to fairly and completely spell out rights .. therefore these OTHER rights are "inalienable"
It doesn't, but I took the "liberty" part to include "free speech", and I'm arguing that by using critical speech as a means to deny a visa, that's effectively the government taking away a right.
I'm not a lawyer or a political philosopher or an ethicist, I'm just a mediocre software engineer, so I will acknowledge that I'm speaking out of my ass on this; I'm just a guy who has read a few books and has a frustrating adherence to my principles.
You cannot take away a right to enter the US from somebody who does not have it in the first place. Only citizens and permanent residents have such a right. Even people given a visa do not have this right, they still can be turned away at the border without any of their rights infringed.
This is no different, for example, from applying for a research grant and getting denied on the basis of the application. The government examined your speech in the application and decided not to give you money, is this a free speech suppression?
That's just kicking the can down the road, because the full sentence is:
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Which would seem to be irrespective of nationality. I think that today, we understand that "men" was meant as a generic term for "person", but the rest of that sentence seems to say that everybody who is a creation of God (which is understood to be everybody) has those unalienable rights. It sure reads to me like it says "everyone on Earth has these rights" not just "people in these colonies have these rights".
I am trolling a little bit here, since I don't actually believe we (the U.S.) should insist on our Constitutional protections applying to non-citizens. But that is what it says to me.
The person who upheld the self-evidence of those truths also asserted his property rights over other humans, so I don't think we can draw meaningful conclusions as to whom he intended to apply his terminology.
No, that nebulous territory is exactly the issue, let's not duck it: should the U.S. impose its view on people who aren't citizens or not? Lately we've been edging toward the side of "no, that's bad to do," but if the answer is yes, maybe we should be reaching out to other countries and telling them what rights they have.
> should the U.S. impose it's view on people who aren't citizens?
> maybe we should be reaching out to other countries and telling them what rights they have.
I don't think it is a matter of telling "other countries" what rights they have or impose the U.S.'s view on people who aren't citizens but of consistently exercising human rights within U.S. jurisdiction (which includes visa applications).
You don't have to go as far as to bring up moral relativism. As it currently stands, the US Constitution is interpreted as a series of bounds placed upon the US government when it interacts with citizens. We don't have to demand that every country respect exactly those sets of bounds, we just have to restrain immigration enforcement from engaging in what would otherwise be a fairly open-and-shut case of retribution for constitutionally protected speech.
That's why I specifically mentioned it's not binding, and I agree that if it were directly cited as a source in a court case, that would probably be bad.
That said, I think it's perfectly useful to demonstrate the possible intent of the founders. Even if you can't directly cite a law out of it, it can still be useful as a tool to figure out what the founders were going for.
To note, it's actually used several times in the past in order to clarify components of the Constitution and other laws.
Disclaimer: Not a legal expert.
Ex: Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U.S. 495 (1976)
The Plaintiffs argued that they were denied Social Security benefits because they were "illegitimate" children of their father even though the plaintiffs were able to prove that they were related.
The court held that among other reasons, because as defined in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal", that there was no differentiation between a "legitimate" child and an "illegitimate" child in the eyes of the government.
There's a few other cases, but that's one that I've studied the most.
Yes, but as you rightly point out, it's used to decide what the founders were going for specifically as it relates to interpretations of The Constitution.
The first 7 words of The Constitution are “We the People of The United States.” Later in the same paragraph they specifically state that they are doing that for “ourselves and our posterity”
There is no ambiguity that the framers were creating rights and laws for “People of the United States”
Yes, but what the founders were going for specifically as it relates to interpretations of The Constitution
The first 7 words of The Constitution are “We the People of The United States.” Later in the same paragraph they specifically state that they are doing that for “ourselves and our posterity”
There is no ambiguity that the framers were creating rights and laws for “People of the United States”
The Supreme Court is itself the sole arbiter of this exception, so in practice they can cite it whenever they want to. The Federalist Papers are cited in a number of supreme court rulings. While one could argue that they are equally relevant to the Declaration, it would be hard to argue that they are less relevant.
I feel like the rights set forth in the Declaration of Independence are not really what this is all about. The US isn't saying you can't write derogatory things about it online, so it's not denying any rights. But non-citizens don't automatically have a right to enter the country, correct?
spot on: the right to enter a countries borders is not granted to all individuals. The right to free speech may be, but it comes with a cost if you say things people don't like. You are still free to say them though.
Free speech is granted to the people. So probably not. Note right to bear arms is granted to 'people' therefore by deduction if you are barred arms you are not a person. Aliens are not typically considered 'people' in a constitutional context.
> "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"
is semantically different from
> "The right of each person to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".
A group can have a right in the general sense that is restricted from individuals in that group. Note that this is a different construct than is used in the First Amendment (and I have a hard time believing that the framers took their semantic decisions in drafting these phrases lightly):
> "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"
DC v Heller makes clear the present day interpretation of the people conveys individual right. People is also said in the fourth amendment, surely you're not arguing individuals have no fourth amendment rights.
In the first I'm specifically referring that it says the right is to the people to petition grievances. The wording pretty clearly doesn't prohibit congress from stopping non-people from assembling/petitioning.
If you can't have a gun you are necessarily not a person based on the present day interpretation of the courts. Therefore most aliens are not people and law can prohibit their grievances (derogatory posts perhaps) and assembly and abridge their protection from search and seizure.
Note:
>> "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"
Lol you purposefully chopped off the part where some of that was explicitly qualified to 'people' rather than to anyone!
> Lol you purposefully chopped off the part where some of that was explicitly qualified to 'people' rather than to anyone!
You mean the bit after the clause I cited, which applies to a different thing than the freedom of speech?
My objection, to be clear, is your insistence on bending over backwards to justify the assertion that the denial of one right necessarily implies the denial of other rights based on a strange inversion of the idea of "personhood".
My assertion is people are people. If the Constitution says the right is to people then people have the rights if people. If you have no right to bear arms you're not a person and the first contrary to your claim does explicitly tailer congresses limitations on assembly and petitioning to 'people' just as the second tailers to people.
If authorities and those with power will apply a "cost" to you for doing an action, you do not have freedom to do that action. This is what freedom means.
Otherwise, what does it mean to you? Is your view that simply being physically capable of doing something means you're 'free' to do it?
Do you think people in North Korea have freedom of speech? After all, they can say whatever they like. It just comes with a cost (life in a labor camp).
I dont think it's about threshold. It's about some consequences being ok to apply and some not being ok. But some of the ok ones may actually be bigger than some of the not-ok ones. For instance the love of your life breaking up with you. That's big. But ok. Or a $20 fine. That's small. But not ok.
> Every possible human action does not have a punishment or a deterrent applied by those with power.
Since every living member of society has some non-zero amount, it would still be the case that free speech is practically impossible, if you set the bar too low. As the chances of that applying to at least 1 person out of 8 billion is pretty close to 100%.
So then the question is, how high exactly is the bar above zero?
I don't know. This feels really easy to abuse. Like, say I wrote something criticizing China on some issue on facebook, and then China denies a future visitor visa. Is that right? Is that reasonable? Is that good for China?
Likewise, I expect that it is not in the USA's best interest to do this, let alone fair to the person who would immigrate into the the US.
> How is it not in a country's best interest to deny a visa to aliens that hate the country?
Is this meant as a straw man?
When does criticism become hate, and how to do you judge speech anyways. Reminds me of that guy in Hong Kong who was given a huge fine and banned from trading in the HKSAR because he said Evergrande would go insolvent. Obviously a hate crime.
But if the "non-citizens don't automatically have a right to enter the country" logic holds up, then what rules should be used to allow or deny entry?
Would it be okay to deny entry to a foreigner because they're black? Or gay? They don't have a right to enter anyways, so I guess it's okay.
This is really about "how does the negative things they say about the US affect how they'll improve the US by being there, if at all" which is really the general rule for most immigration; how can this person help and improve the country they're entering.
It's "right of entry/movement" that is impacted, and that along with a few others (voting) isn't extended to non-citizens at all.
While the United States is certainly big enough to ignore a few insults, some derogatory statements might imply a willingness to do the country or its people harm.
My wife has a pending green card application. I'm sympathetic to would-be immigrants, but...
The Declaration of Independence declares it self-evident that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the purpose of governments is to secure these rights, subject to the consent of the governed.
Unless I'm misreading it, the Declaration of Independence doesn't directly mention freedom of speech.
Also, presumably these tools are being used to prioritize applicants based on a benefit/risk assessment. If the purpose isn't to deny entry as a form of punishment, then freedom of speech presumably wouldn't come into the picture. Intent matters. Prioritization isn't necessarily punishment.
“My wife is a would-be immigrant so I am sympathetic”
Or sometimes
“My partner is half X So I understand discrimination against X”
Or even sometimes
“I am in category Y so there’s no way I can hate people in category Y”
I don’t think that line of reasoning makes sense. People often times carve out mental exemptions for people close to them that they care about, not for everyone in the same category. Further more, it is totally possible to love a person but not every quality about them. Also just because you are close to someone doesn’t mean you understand entirely their struggles
I intentionally didn't draw a causative link between my wife being a would-be immigrant and my being sympathetic. It's supporting evidence, not a causal relation.
It's possible that you're often similarly misreading statements from others as implying causality. It's absolutely faulty logic to say I have relationship X to Y so I can't be Y. However, P(Not against Y | my relationship X to Y) > P(Not against Y) may certainly be valid reasoning.
I certainly can't think of any Y where I'd take a tonights-bar-tab bar bet against the statement that people married to Y are more sympathetic on average toward Y than the average person.
It's preemptive defense against inevitable knee-jerk "you're anti-immigrant" ad hominem attacks. I wish I didn't feel the need to preempt such diversions, but that's the world in which we live.
Yeah as a gay dude I see this frequently in peeps "I used to hate gays until I found out my daughter was a lesbian". Sure it's nice for people to realise they were wrong, but it would sure be swell to skip all of the hate in between, for everyone involved.
The US government isn't preventing anyone, especially non-citizens living in other countries, from exercising their free speech. We are also free to read your free speech, and deny you entry to our country because of what you said about our country.
What you are talking about here, is that we as a people, have no right to listen to what you say and make decisions based on that. What you are saying is that if there's a guy outside your house yelling that you're an evil bad person who should rot in hell, you obligated to ignore his words in your decision to open your door and invite him in, because he has a right to say anything he wants. Do you... Do you get robbed a lot? If you do, you should observe the world around you, and make decisions based on those observations. This will greatly help you not get robbed a lot.
In my experience with CBP the only real thing being a citizen buys you is they have to let you in -- eventually -- and maybe over a 1+ day detention complete with forced fingerprinting etc. But they will lie and tell you they don't.
Well they also claim to provide shortened data retention in case they did let you in. I believe photos they take of you must be deleted in twelve hours or something like.
> visa applicants aren't US citizens and aren't in the US, so they don't have the same set of rights that citizens do, nor should they.
That was a strong Kool-Aid. There are universal human rights, there is no need to grant applicants USA constitutional rights to respect the former. It's a matter of decency and honesty, you are not free to infringe the privacy of others just because they weren't born in a different soil than you.
Of course, human rights are constantly abused at several degrees all over the world, but geez, at least try to be discrete about it.
Don't be intentionally (I hope) obtuse. I'm not saying everyone should get a visa, I'm saying universal human rights should be repected by all governments that supposedly recognized them. Allow or deny the visa, but respect the applicant's dignity.
Privacy is one of those analienable universal human rights recognized by the UN, and demanding to see the social networks of other is infringing it, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. It's not only a faceless government employee(s) probing and ogling your social life, social networks allow private messaging, which becomes non-private after these unreasonable demands.
I wonder when will the NSA also get its own drone program to shoot at Middle East weddings. They must be feeling down seeing how the intelligence gatherers from the CIA are now in the business of waging aerial war, while they, the NSA, are left with the boring office work.
Yes. Not for that specific reason, though. The CIA for its human rights abuses, experimentation on American citizens, torture, mass murder and support for violent autocratic regimes and terrorists around the world, and the NSA for all of its various domestic surveillance and data mining activities.
This is not a real suggestion to have no spy agencies, right?
Is every other country going to follow suit? Would you have the US disband their military as well? Or should they just deploy it without any sort of intelligence gathering?
> This is not a real suggestion to have no spy agencies, right?
I do think we should not have these specific agencies, because they've proven themselves too corrupt, and we should consider a "defund" strategy for our entire military industrial complex, completely dismantling the existing systems and replacing them with something a little less... evil? Certainly scaled back by a few orders of magnitude.
But then the only reason these agencies act the way they do and get away with it is because the government wants it that way. So maybe just burn it all down, I don't know. I'm starting to think Thomas Jefferson was right and we should at least try to shoot all the politicians, rip up the Constitution and start over every 20 years.
So not a realistic suggestion, no.
> Would you have the US disband their military as well?
Honestly I think the world would be better off if the US only had the national guard and a small purely defensive coastal navy like Japan. Maybe not randomly fuck up Asian or Middle Eastern countries every few years in the name of oil or Jesus or kickbacks to Lockheed Martin.
Yes. Constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure mean nothing if they only apply to citizens, because not everyone is a dual citizen of every country with an intelligence agency. If America can't spy on Americans, and the UK can't[0] spy on Brits, America can still ask the UK to spy on Americans that don't have dual citizenship with the UK, and the UK can ask America to spy on Brits that don't have dual citizenship with America. This makes 4A into a water sandwich.
[0] I'm assuming there's some kind of 4A-equivalent bound on government behavior in the Calvinball soup that is the UK 'constitution'
Admittance to the United States is not a universal right. If I wanted to move to Europe right now, it is a lengthy painful process just like an alien trying to move to the US.
Applicants will be screened. Reviewing what you say publicly about the United States as part of that process is not a privacy violation. If you are making statements that you want to blow up buildings or steal nuclear secrets, it is very reasonable to deny you entry.
> If I wanted to move to Europe right now, it is a lengthy painful process just like an alien trying to move to the US.
Moving permanently is one thing, but Europeans have to go through that bullshit even for tourist visas, while all y'all need is your passport because our dumbass politicians didn't insist on reciprocity.
> Moving permanently is one thing, but Europeans have to go through that bullshit even for tourist visas,
Most Europeans get to use the quick and relatively cheap shortcut of ESTA/VWP rather than needing to apply for a full tourist visa, though indeed there are exceptions based on nationality or personal history.
> while all y'all need is your passport because our dumbass politicians didn't insist on reciprocity.
The EU has been working on their own version of ESTA called ETIAS for many years now, which has been repeatedly delayed for EU-internal reasons that as far as I've read have nothing to do with US pressure, like technical/IT delays and a request from France for the related Entry/Exit System not to begin before the Paris Olympics. ETIAS is currently expected to begin operation in 2025 and will apply to US citizens just as it will to every other Schengen-visa exempt third-country nationality.
Since you said "Europeans" rather than "EU citizens" or "Schengen citizens", I'll recognize that the UK is still in Europe and note that they're preparing to do the same kind of thing, with their system to be called ETA and also intended to include US citizens once fully implemented.
So that will bring approximate reciprocity, again with the exception of those Europeans who don't qualify for the US ESTA/VWP system.
> Most Europeans get to use the quick and relatively cheap shortcut of ESTA/VWP rather than needing to apply for a full tourist visa, though indeed there are exceptions based on nationality or personal history.
You still need to pass the CBP exam, have your social media profile scanned by them, or you can be rejected at the border because the CBP agent doesn't like you got convicted for pot at 18.
You Americans don't have to endure any of that to enter the Schengen area.
> ETIAS is currently expected to begin operation in 2025 and will apply to US citizens just as it will to every other Schengen-visa exempt third-country nationality.
I have zero reason to believe ETIAS will be ready by that date.
> You still need to pass the CBP exam, have your social media profile scanned by them, or you can be rejected at the border because the CBP agent doesn't like you got convicted for pot at 18.
We agree that the US government border rules for noncitizens are far too invasive and harsh, especially as to drug rules - though the core of that harshness comes from laws passed by the elected legislators, with only part of it coming from agency regulations and culture.
Much of that awfulness is not about a lack of reciprocity for the visa exemption: what you describe applies even to people who do need visas, not only to those who qualify for the Visa Waiver Program.
Even Canadians, who normally are truly exempt from needing any kind of pre-approval at all to show up at a US port of entry with a Canadian passport, can still be interrogated and refused for all the same reasons as any European - they can just skip the advance approval, aside from any waiver they might need due to previously having been found inadmissible, but they are still rolling the dice at the border as with any other visitor.
By contrast, people who need US visas have far more expense and hassle to deal with than the still-bad bullshit that the US puts most European tourists through - on top of most of that bullshit, not instead of it.
> You Americans don't have to endure any of that to enter the Schengen area.
Very true, but again, this difference between the systems is far more pervasive than just any lack of reciprocity. The European immigration and border control systems are just plain more humane and less broken than the US equivalents, regardless of which countries exempt which other countries from which documentation requirements.
> I have zero reason to believe ETIAS will be ready by that date.
It’s true that it’s been delayed an absurd number of times so far and could get delayed again. But the biggest reason for the duration of the latest delay is just a short-term political matter rather than anything technical: France wants to delay the Entry/Exit System until after the Paris Olympics, and ETIAS depends on that working well for some months.
From what I’ve read, the IT side of things is close to ready. We will see. I would not be surprised by further small delays, but I do expect these systems to begin operating within a few years instead of beyond that time.
Most modern western nations have set up rules, often enshrined in their constitution, for what their government can and can’t do regardless of who they’re doing it to and where they’re doing it.
Then there’s the US who has consistently held that those rules only apply on US soil (hence Guantanamo) and that the rules only really apply when it comes to US citizens (lawful permanent residents get a slightly more diminished “store brand” version of the protections).
> Most modern western nations have set up rules, often enshrined in their constitution, for what their government can and can’t do regardless of who they’re doing it to and where they’re doing it
Practically all of these have a gaping martial exemption.
You’d be surprised how little exemptions exist, but since I can’t prove a negative I’ll take whatever you have w/r/t these exemptions by western nations.
That said, as far as I know, martial law has only been declared at the federal level once, in 1863 during the Civil War, so I’m not sure what that has the do with anything.
> Then there’s the US who has consistently held that those rules only apply on US soil (hence Guantanamo)
First, Johnson v. Eisentrager (the one case on which your “consistently held” seems to be anchored), was narrower than that, only holding that US courts lacked jurisdiction to hear challenges from enemy military prisoners who at no point had been held in the US.
Second, it and the idea that those detained by the US government have no rights cognizable under US law or enforceable in US courts were subsequently contradicted by Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (US citizens detained in conflict, even entirely overseas, retain Constitutional due process rights), Rasul v. Bush (military detainees have right to habeas corpus review of detention in federal court; this and subsequent cases in this list all deal with non-citizen detainees), Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (in a habeas challenge as allowed under Rasul v. Bush, finding the military commissions instituted at that time at Guatanamo illegal under both the Geneva Conventions and the UCMJ), and Boumedienne v. Bush (section of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 purporting to strip detainees of habeas corpus rights was unconstitutional and detainees retained those rights.)
Agree with this comment and disagree with the article.
The US owes nothing to the people who want to immigrate here, certainly not due process. If they don't like the US, its policies or citizens, the US should find that out. It is the duty of US immigration to scan their posts for anti-US sentiment, as well as adherence to any ideology that is corrosive to democratic society.
They are effectively applying for a job as US citizen, and should comport themselves accordingly.
Before we fall for the flame bait, it is unclear what is happening from the article. The ACLU is suing DHS to get an explanation of how the DHS is using a service that collects and analyzes social media data on Visa applicants. The company sold a different product to enforce the law over visa terms using social media. They are now selling a different product but it is not public what it does or how it is used. The ACLU wants answers. That is all.
There's got to be some game theoretic threshold where a party switches from optimizing to solve a problem to just attacking their critics instead. Something about the incentives has tipped for ostensibly democratic governments where they are spending their efforts demolishing their nations and societies and attacking their critics.
Does this apply to illegal aliens? If so, I don't really see a problem with this, esp. in the wake of the Israel/Gaza conflict. Look at the country of origin from recent southern border crossing. Its all over the place. Somehow people from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, are getting to Mexico, and crossing the border. If I was trying to migrate to a different country, as an American, I'd fully suspect that country to do everything in its power to vet me.
How could it?
Undocumented people are undocumented. The harder / longer the process the more likely people are just find ways to forgo engaging with it. Especially if it looks like positive outcome is unlikely.
Would need to see a citation on the rest of you've said as it sounds a little like right wing talking point.
Seems a bit rich the descendants of many migrants are pulling up the ladder.
Migrants always pull up the ladder, they're no different than you and I. Look at South Africa, visas are a total nightmare meanwhile almost everybody there are from tribes that migrated in recent history.
The second sentence of the article says that it's being used on visa applicants, who are therefore trying to enter the country legally. If CBP is already aware that someone has or is attempting to enter the country illegally, they don't need to analyze their social media.
Also, "illegal alien" is an outdated term because implies an individual's entire existence as "illegal," which is dehumanizing.
ICE and CBP are using it ... ICE is more involved in illegal migration cases. So its likely being used for both legal immigration pathways and the illegal ones. Perhaps further FOIA or reporting will help reveal more details.
Also, "illegal alien" is an outdated term because implies an individual's entire existence as "illegal," which is dehumanizing
The "outdated" critique is Orwellian - an attempt to language police and limit the scope of debate by reframing the words and terms used to discuss a complex issue. Newspeak's purpose is to limit freedom of thought and control the population. The aim is to restrict the range of ideas people can express, thereby limiting the range of ideas they can even consider. When we start policing the term "illegal immigrant," we run the risk of narrowing our debate and discussion surrounding immigration policy.
It's also worth considering the consistency of this argument across different domains. For example, nobody is advocating for softening the term "illegal miner". In these contexts, the term "illegal" serves to accurately describe an action that is against the law. It doesn't mean that the individual’s entire identity is reduced to that action, but it does indicate that the action itself is not in compliance with existing laws.
The terminology around illegal is a political act. It is illegal to cross a border without authorization everywhere. The goal is prey on social grace to get people to use words like “undocumented” which means policy can be controlled via documentation. The idea is to subvert the law by changing terminology. I can’t tell if you are a sheep or a wolf from your post.
As an american, it is unlikely (if understandable) that you know how your immigration system works neither in paper or in practice. As an american who has never lived abroad, you most definitely don't know how other immigration systems work. Your understanding of immigration has been molded by the media you consume, both news of whatever slant and movies.
Isn't it a good idea to vet people before you let them enter your country? Why would you let in someone that is hostile to your country? Especially these days with so many individuals being driven by nefarious ideologies?
Yeah like, there is a broad class of immigrant that endlessly complains about how awful the US is an awful force in the world, and then immigrates here for a high-paying job (and continues complaining).
I don't want them! Why should we be required to ignore their personal feelings?
There's a long list of people who want into the US. We should prioritize the people who actually like the US, this doesn't feel controversial.
Delegating these kinds of decisions to a faceless AI is the thing that is controversial.
The ability to systematically analyze a person's life and communications and then derive a "desirability" score is the thing that's controversial.
Similar to the subject of client-side scanning for abusive material, the issue is not that anyone supports the abuse. The issues all stem from the implications of the underlying technology and embracing "the ends justify the means".
Would you be in favor of vetting some or all publicly available information before letting someone into a country?
If the answer is no, then you might be missing a lot of people that have nefarious intent, where you could have prevented that by looking at their social media posts. If the answer is yes, then you have to delegate to something / someone. Maybe an AI might be better than a human at spotting warning signs.
I’m not saying that there should be no vetting whatsoever.
But there’s a vast possibility space between no vetting and the systematic analysis of all public information about a person. Especially when social media - a place where people are rarely their authentic selves - is a primary source. There is far more stupid stuff being said on social media than dangerous stuff. But the two can be nearly indistinguishable without appropriate context. People will be denied entry for being spicy far more than for legitimate reasons I’d imagine.
Not to mention that there is a significant amount of public information that should not be public in the first place. Its availability is not a justification for its use in this way.
By
> If the answer is no, then you might be missing a lot of people that have nefarious intent, where you could have prevented that by looking at their social media posts.
I can’t get on board with this framing. It feels similar to the arguments for more cameras in public places. Put a camera on every corner. They’re public after all. But once you start feeding those cameras into a central AI that can track your every move, they’re no longer just cameras, and the very idea of what it means to be in public no longer means the same thing that it did for most of human civilization.
Again, I’m not saying they should look at anything. But I think it’s also necessary to raise red flags when emerging tech will be used in increasingly invasive ways by governments.
I do not want someone to come to the US just to push for dramatic changes. Sorry, but you can do that where you already are.
Obviously someone who is 80% positive and 20% "here are some improvements" is one thing, but if they spend all their time whining about US imperialism, I do not want them.
Not great myself. Sometimes you move someplace specifically to assimilate with the culture because you feel it's a leg up from where you left. When it is infuriating is when someone comes from someplace that has been torched by failed ideas, or at least failed in the sense it drove them to leave, and they set up shop and do the same damn thing. It ought not be illegal, but for instance you see that with home owners that flee and then vote for the same dumbass stuff that made their origin unaffordable.
You have the right to just show up with newly printed residency and demand change, but no right to be liked for it.
On one hand, techno-surveillance is scary and it rarely marches backward, so letting this happen for citizenship applications will have a chilling effect on foreign intellectuals, and train people who may consider entering this country some day not to speak their mind.
I understand the theory that we don't want people coming here who rant all day saying "US is a terrorist state and something should be done about it" on social media. But I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze.
They are allowed. Is a country allowed to deny a visa based on criticism?
Maybe closer to the intended end goal here – is a country allowed to deny a visa to a person entering that country, if the level of criticism is on the extreme end?
But there is hilariously due process that probably protects those opinions once you've already snuck in.
It's a wonder why people put themselves through the hassle of legal immigration where they have basically no rights, when they could just sneak in and be covered by most civil rights and entitled due process in the unlikely event they do something dumb or unlucky enough to get caught.
> Are foreigners not allowed to criticize anything?
I think this is where we get into the nuance of standards. Calling us out on our foreign policy? Fair game. Calling us fundamentally immoral or heretical? No thanks.
> Are foreigners not allowed to criticize anything?
This seems fairly disingenuous. Nobody said foreigners shouldn't be allowed to criticize anything. Rather, the "for" argument is that their criticism should be analyzed to see if it would be detrimental to let them into the country.
"My house" isn't exactly a good analogy for "the country", but to be overly simplistic
1. Your house is an ugly color
2. Your house is a blight on the land; you should be tossed to the street and it burned to the ground
Those are both criticisms of the the house. They are entirely different things to consider when deciding whether that person should be allowed in the house.
Of course they are. But at a certain point, if you complain enough about how evil your neighbor Mary is, it becomes weird to go over to her house and have her serve you dinner.
This is censorship. You are advocating for censorship of the majority of humanity through legal reprisals to prospective immigrants for having a negative opinion of the country they want to move to.
The majority of human beings are not people who hold values I want in this country. Do I want someone who thinks that heretics should be killed? Women should be circumcised? China should be sterilizing minorities in Xinjiang?
Liberal democracy works when the population has a common baseline of enlightened values and mutual respect for the system they work within, I am not apologizing for attempting to maintain that.
Liberal democracy is already under threat by American citizens, and you don't need to immigrate to America to attack American values. You just go online, register a few hundred troll and bot accounts[0], and push your narrative about how we need to persecute a specific group of people in blatant violation of the 1st Amendment.
The thing about America is that it's very good[1] at passing on its politics to immigrants and their children. This is why you get lots of immigrants who want to pull the ladder up behind themselves and ban immigrants, which is a hilariously illiberal policy that would actually harm themselves. The far-right Islamofascist nutters who want to kill heretics and forcibly mutilate women's vaginas will, given enough time, absolutely break bread with the far-right Christofascist nutters who want to ban books they don't like from schools and ban trans people from public spaces[2]. Given enough time, even tankies[3] could get in on this and form a pan-authoritarian cult of illiberality and oppression.
Insamuch as this necessitates any compromise of liberal values for the sake of the continued existence of liberalism in the United States, such a compromise should be limited to the least invasive change necessary to preserve human rights. Banning immigrants for having grumbles about the US smells like collective punishment, and we don't actually need that. Illiberal and far-right thinking is spread by very small numbers of influential and socially connected grifters, and targeting just them would be less invasive.
Furthermore, we don't actually know what speech US ICE is using to deny visas, just that they're using machine learning to scan for some kind of speech. They might be solely targeting foreign liberals because that's what they consider a security threat to themselves.
[0] Aided by Elon Musk selling bluechecks and algorithmic boosts on Xitter for $8/mo
[1] Relative to other countries, of course, who basically don't even try
[2] We don't have to get into why they would do this - or how they'd excuse it given their mutual hatred for one another. Crank magnetism is a powerful force.
Although I agree it is a tragedy that not everyone has the opportunity to be born an American, and I am a staunch advocate for trying to remedy that (no more illegal immigration problems from SA if we just annex the whole damn thing, manifest destiny my friend).
That doesn't mean that every person has the right to be in America simply because they want to.
My objection is the criteria is likely arbitrary and capricious and have more to do with ideologies of the sorts of people designing and executing this than public safety.
Maybe the AI is better, maybe it is worse. On some occasions CBP just takes a good look at you for whiteness or whatever and just waives you through without even opening the passport; other days you end up with your car in 1500 pieces. It's mostly voodoo.
I see it more as an effort to discriminate more based on ideology and less on phenotype, and that's a great thing assuming it can be implemented well (dubious).
We want to live in a world with no discrimination of people's rights based on their hardware, because that's generally not changeable. But we will absolutely still continue to discriminate on the software running in your brain, because not only is that changeable, but certain software is incompatible with the social order that gives us the privilege to rise above our baser nature.
Because I at least hold the ideal that we should judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. No individual gets to choose the genes they inherit, but they do have some level of agency over how they choose to operate in the world.
> The First Amendment is rather exactly about not doing that.
True, but the system in place that enforces the first amendment and the entire Constitution ultimately depends on the vast majority of people to agree and comply with that base ideology. The system of governance isn't omnipotent or omnipresent enough to defend against a large enough minority of the population becoming hostile to these ideals.
This is the big reason why Trump's violation of the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power is so horrific, because it threatened the foundation of consensus that lets our system operate as a democracy that non destructively lets the best ideas and leaders rise to the top.
There are various cultural traits that are effectively as solidified as phenotype by the time you're old enough to be considered acting independently of your parent/guardian. Lots of these traits are also used as backdoor phenotype profiling.
There is massive variety of culture and ideology between people that share the same phenotypes. And some of that culture and ideology is incompatible with the preservation of our democratic norm of peaceful competition of ideas and peaceful transfer of power.
This is also why racial profiling is not only morally wrong, but practically problematic. It's lazy and sloppy guardianship that's targeting a perceived proxy for the threat rather than the actual threat.
The threat is not the genes, it's the memes. And if our societal defense system is targeting genes, then the memes will eventually figure out how to find different hosts that can bypass those defenses.
Genes can definitely be a threat factor. For instance it is nearly certain males are genetically more prone to violence than females.
> There is massive variety of culture and ideology between people that share the same phenotypes
The missing note here is that some phenotype cluster near areas with proximate similar culture. If I ban anyone speaking Mandarin or with Chinese accent I'm not really banning a phenotype but everyone knows what this actually does. I think you very much understand how solidified cultural traits are used as backdoor to profile phenotype.
These people drive me fucking insane. The number of wealthy immigrants who full-time complain while being from like, Singapore or Ireland is bizarre to me.
Why live somewhere you have no connections to and dislike when you prefer your arguably-nicer home country?
Can someone enlighten me? I’ve worked with dozens of those people
It’s especially wild when you talk to Indians who INSIST America is the greatest nation in history and that we have no idea how lucky we are.
Go to India/China/UK/France etc and live & work for half a year and you'll see why.
Look at opportunities/salary/living condition/infrastructure and it's clear. Of course USA is not perfect and has lots of problems, and many people go back to their country after getting a degree from a US institution, for very good reasons. But still a lot of people stay for the benefits.
It's a waste of money at best. People that mean harm would bypass it like 9/11 hijacker which were drunk.
e.g. someone is sharing a post about killing children in Gaza or any other highly controversial topic. Gov employee wastes resources try to check this person, he gets a stressful afternoon. System is prone to abuse and would have a lot of false positives.
Because just like most of these laws, on the surface it sounds nice and good like “protecting the kids!!”, but in reality it will be used and abused against you, even if you are a citizen.
I kind of some people are lost in their ultra liberal views, and anti big brother views.
I consider myself moderately liberal.
If you have an non citizen coming to US , and this person is hostile to US, why this person allowed to come here. It's a free world, if you don't like democracy, go to the other part of non-free world.
Not letting hostile people in, it's a corner stone of any national security. It has nothing to do with liberalism. They are simply doing their job.
And yes, you can find lots ways how US is not a free country. But at least US declare this as an idea. There are countries, Iran , Russia , China have other priorities.
What degree of criticism crosses the threshold of "hostile"? For some on the conservative side any criticism or comparison of the US by Americans or worse yet by foreigners unacceptable; the "love it or leave it" crowd. There have been repeated incidents of various politicians, journalists and authors being denied entry for little more (and sometimes less) than saying that the US "kinda sucks".
Obviously there's little good reason to admit someone who wants to overthrow the government (there are already enough of those locally) but literally anyone who says that the US is less than perfect?
I certainly don't want this decision to be in the hands of an unaccountable and capricious ICE officers. I've personally experienced just a taste of how petty they can be and have little reason to doubt that they are routinely spiteful assholes.
Ever since the Trump administration started requiring people to provide their social media accounts in visa applications, I stopped using all of them. Not going to do something that's going to potentially negatively impact my life. Social media companies don't have a good track record themselves anyway.
As a US citizen, I will be as derogatory to the US government as I wish. And I expect the same right for any citizen of the world, and any would-be citizen of the US. Why else would they be applying for US citizenship if not to secure the right to free speech?
They are probably looking for markers of terrorism and criminal activity. One thing that I learned from my work with the SPLC was that extremists self-snitch on social media all the time. Transparency in law enforcement is always a good thing though so hopefully we'll learn more from the lawsuit.
These systems typically have major issues with bias and mislabeled training data [0], and I have a feeling ICE has very lax heuristics for what makes a given post extremist or indicative of criminal activity.
My own views are far from moderate in many respects, and I don't think ICE would like them very much.
Dang the comments are crazy. So i cant post about the insane triggerhappy police force? What about the outrageous offence budget? The amount of homeless (absolutely towering over the amount that my shithole 3rd world homecountry has) especially in contrast to the offence budget? The opioid crisis? Housing becoming not affordable for so many? Etc etc so many other things? Do I have to allign with the status quo completely?
This may have been what happened to me as I didnt get an H1B 3 years in a row so I had to leave and the company i worked for had to get me an L1 visa. Im not an avid social media poster or anyrhing either, but I have been critical of the US online.
Not getting H1B as someone with an MS diploma felt like it was personal (and not a "lottery" that the visa is claimed to be)
Inb4, then why come? Well, before I came I never knew any of this stuff, as i was a foreigner in high school. Came over for college, stayed for a position at a FAANG corp. "The american dream"
I've known a grad student that was admitted to a very prestigious US university, and came from a country which was unjustly invaded by the US. When he was about to come, his visa was denied/indefinitely delayed, and they eventually admitted that the reason was that they made derogatory posts on social media as a result of that invasion.
You criticize the French government in your investigative reporting.
You take a visit to France again next time.
They prohibit your entry based on your articles. All else equal you otherwise would have been granted entry.
===
The United States’ Constitution has a first amendment that does not discern between citizen or not. It applies to the laws that can be made.
Same goes for the other bill of rights.
Obviously a non citizen should not have the right to vote, but a non citizen still should have and they do have the right of freedom of speech or the right to a speedy trial…
Part of the first amendment, specifically assembly and petitioning grievances is explicitly qualified to the 'people'. Aliens are not generally considered the 'people' in the US, as evidenced by them not being allowed arms which are the right of (even individual per Heller) people.
When a part of the constitution wants to describe the requirement of citizen or not, it will specifically say.
"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
"No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen."
But some of the restrictions may be on how the constitution was worded. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," implies that that person has an interest in the United States, instead of being a visitor. So only nonimmigrant visa aliens have a hard time, but there are exceptions.
Even so, law that exists does not imply that it is correct or just with other laws. The AI tool in the article or some of the restrictions are up for debate on their legality. The same way why people debate gun restrictions on their constitutionality.
the clause "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," modifies the requirement to those with an interest in the United States, instead of visitors.
OR
The current laws are unjust by being unconstitutional.
Heller made clear that right of people is individual rights of persons. So for instance you still have fourth amendment right even when by yourself. Heller also clarifies the right is disconnected from militia service.
I'm just looking for a single logically consistent person to admit that aliens (not just those with a hunting license or other credential) are people with all the rights of people, or not people and not protected specifically by what is narrowed to protection of people. You were painfully close.
I've been debating this with various people for years and you're the first person willing to pick one or the other.
For the record I'm in agreement, although imo neither answer is wrong as long as consistent.
What is insane to me is that almost no one including the courts want to address that harsh logical inconsistency through much beyond high IQ handwaving.
Yes, the second amendment should apply even if you are a visitor. If a citizen just needs a license to own, then you just need a license.
I was just saying that that clause in the second amendment could be the only possible way a court could argue otherwise. Because the constitution states:
"nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
So, only that clause "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," could modify that. But I don't think it does, but a lot of Supreme Court justices have a lot of ideas about the clause.
Only should voting (including running for office) and immigration should be tied to citizenship. I think we have the same ideas. A lot of people in the comments were arguing that non citizens should not have freedom of speech. That is pretty weird and unconstitutional.
Which is total BS because as someone who moved to the UK, I bitch about the UK all the time.
Sure, I respect the fact that I've been allowed to live and work here, but what sort of democracy doesn't allow critical thoughts of a government, country, culture etc?
There's a huge difference between if I said something like "The UK state should be destroyed, all British citizens are heathens" as opposed to what I usually say which is more "there's a huge class and wealth gap problem in the UK", "both sides of the gov here are only interested in filling their own pockets with money", "why does my tier 5 visa years not count towards ILR like my tier 2 does, why is UK so anti immigration when their entire services economy replies upon it?", "British people are resistant to change and cling onto old ideas", "British politeness is actually a myth, rudeness is just expressed differently here, the politeness is often insincere".
All things that are critical of the UK but valid viewpoints that others may disagree with. I couldn't imagine not being able to be freely critical of the place you live. What's the point in voting, otherwise?
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 201 ms ] threadSurely that can't be the only thing necessary to flag them based on their social media posts. As using here as an example, I down vote things I meant to upvote or vice versa constantly. Imagine being denied a visa based on that.
The position of the US is that everyone coming to the US is intending to move here permanently, and any sort of visitation visa will be _denied by default_ from many countries unless you can prove otherwise, and the hoops they make you go through can be ridiculous. I talked to someone from Colombia who waited years for a visa interview, spent weeks preparing for it and got denied 5 minutes into the call because they didn't have enough money in the bank at home. No appeal. All they wanted to do is visit their brother for a week. They hadn't seen him for years.
The policy is often bullshit, but following it and still being denied would be infuriating.
It's one thing for the government to spy on your social media postings and decide you're a risk to the country, it's a whole 'nother thing for that to be an error because you posted about that "killer" concert or how a movie is "the bomb".
Given what we know of government contractors and their inflated claims about AI my bet is that this tool - however justifiable or not in its use - doesn't even actually work as advertised.
This article isn't super clear about what agencies are using this for what purposes, beyond looking at visa applicants, but visa applicants aren't US citizens and aren't in the US, so they don't have the same set of rights that citizens do, nor should they.
That area covers over 65% of the total US population btw
Since 9/11, one cannot apply for a US visa if they’re in US. In the context of US immigration, “visa” grants entry, “status” grants stay. If you’re in US, and need to change “status” to a different category (business/leisure, student, etc), you have two primary choices: (1) apply for “change of status” in US, or (2) leave US, apply for a new “visa” in the new category, and enter US using that new “visa”.
Your entry into the states (visa) and your stay (status) in the states are two completely different things. When you enter with a visa, the CBP officer note your status and its validity date on your I-94.
All a visa does is afford you the opportunity to present yourself at the port of entry and request to enter, it bears no guarantee nor right to enter.
I take issue with the "nor should they" aspect of what you said. While I'm aware it's not a binding document, the United States [1] claims that these rights should be inalienable. This, to me, would imply that these rights should apply to everyone.
Obviously this gets into more nebulous territory if the person isn't within the states, but I still fundamentally think the right to free speech should apply.
EDIT: [1] Declaration of Independence.
I'm not religious, so I don't believe in a "creator" in the most literal sense, but doesn't this imply that (from the government's perspective) that these rights were given by God, and cannot be taken away by a government?
Again, I'm aware that the declaration is not a legally binding document, but I feel like it symbolizes the ideals of what the US was supposed to be.
I'm not a lawyer or a political philosopher or an ethicist, I'm just a mediocre software engineer, so I will acknowledge that I'm speaking out of my ass on this; I'm just a guy who has read a few books and has a frustrating adherence to my principles.
This is no different, for example, from applying for a research grant and getting denied on the basis of the application. The government examined your speech in the application and decided not to give you money, is this a free speech suppression?
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Which would seem to be irrespective of nationality. I think that today, we understand that "men" was meant as a generic term for "person", but the rest of that sentence seems to say that everybody who is a creation of God (which is understood to be everybody) has those unalienable rights. It sure reads to me like it says "everyone on Earth has these rights" not just "people in these colonies have these rights".
I am trolling a little bit here, since I don't actually believe we (the U.S.) should insist on our Constitutional protections applying to non-citizens. But that is what it says to me.
> maybe we should be reaching out to other countries and telling them what rights they have.
I don't think it is a matter of telling "other countries" what rights they have or impose the U.S.'s view on people who aren't citizens but of consistently exercising human rights within U.S. jurisdiction (which includes visa applications).
It's superseded by The Constitution, the actual foundation for all American laws.
It's a nice thing Americans are proud of, but for example, The Supreme Court can't cite in a ruling, unless it's also in-line with The Constitution.
That said, I think it's perfectly useful to demonstrate the possible intent of the founders. Even if you can't directly cite a law out of it, it can still be useful as a tool to figure out what the founders were going for.
Disclaimer: Not a legal expert.
Ex: Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U.S. 495 (1976)
The Plaintiffs argued that they were denied Social Security benefits because they were "illegitimate" children of their father even though the plaintiffs were able to prove that they were related.
The court held that among other reasons, because as defined in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal", that there was no differentiation between a "legitimate" child and an "illegitimate" child in the eyes of the government.
There's a few other cases, but that's one that I've studied the most.
The first 7 words of The Constitution are “We the People of The United States.” Later in the same paragraph they specifically state that they are doing that for “ourselves and our posterity”
There is no ambiguity that the framers were creating rights and laws for “People of the United States”
The first 7 words of The Constitution are “We the People of The United States.” Later in the same paragraph they specifically state that they are doing that for “ourselves and our posterity”
There is no ambiguity that the framers were creating rights and laws for “People of the United States”
The Supreme Court is itself the sole arbiter of this exception, so in practice they can cite it whenever they want to. The Federalist Papers are cited in a number of supreme court rulings. While one could argue that they are equally relevant to the Declaration, it would be hard to argue that they are less relevant.
is semantically different from
> "The right of each person to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".
A group can have a right in the general sense that is restricted from individuals in that group. Note that this is a different construct than is used in the First Amendment (and I have a hard time believing that the framers took their semantic decisions in drafting these phrases lightly):
> "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"
In the first I'm specifically referring that it says the right is to the people to petition grievances. The wording pretty clearly doesn't prohibit congress from stopping non-people from assembling/petitioning.
If you can't have a gun you are necessarily not a person based on the present day interpretation of the courts. Therefore most aliens are not people and law can prohibit their grievances (derogatory posts perhaps) and assembly and abridge their protection from search and seizure.
Note:
>> "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"
Lol you purposefully chopped off the part where some of that was explicitly qualified to 'people' rather than to anyone!
You mean the bit after the clause I cited, which applies to a different thing than the freedom of speech?
My objection, to be clear, is your insistence on bending over backwards to justify the assertion that the denial of one right necessarily implies the denial of other rights based on a strange inversion of the idea of "personhood".
Otherwise, what does it mean to you? Is your view that simply being physically capable of doing something means you're 'free' to do it?
Do you think people in North Korea have freedom of speech? After all, they can say whatever they like. It just comes with a cost (life in a labor camp).
Which seems a bit silly, most people understand it to mean 'free' above a certain underlying threshold.
e.g. swear words in a kindergarten
Every possible human action does not have a punishment or a deterrent applied by those with power.
Freedom to do X means there's no punishment for doing X.
Since every living member of society has some non-zero amount, it would still be the case that free speech is practically impossible, if you set the bar too low. As the chances of that applying to at least 1 person out of 8 billion is pretty close to 100%.
So then the question is, how high exactly is the bar above zero?
Likewise, I expect that it is not in the USA's best interest to do this, let alone fair to the person who would immigrate into the the US.
Is this meant as a straw man?
When does criticism become hate, and how to do you judge speech anyways. Reminds me of that guy in Hong Kong who was given a huge fine and banned from trading in the HKSAR because he said Evergrande would go insolvent. Obviously a hate crime.
Would it be okay to deny entry to a foreigner because they're black? Or gay? They don't have a right to enter anyways, so I guess it's okay.
This is really about "how does the negative things they say about the US affect how they'll improve the US by being there, if at all" which is really the general rule for most immigration; how can this person help and improve the country they're entering.
It's "right of entry/movement" that is impacted, and that along with a few others (voting) isn't extended to non-citizens at all.
While the United States is certainly big enough to ignore a few insults, some derogatory statements might imply a willingness to do the country or its people harm.
The Declaration of Independence declares it self-evident that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the purpose of governments is to secure these rights, subject to the consent of the governed.
Unless I'm misreading it, the Declaration of Independence doesn't directly mention freedom of speech.
Also, presumably these tools are being used to prioritize applicants based on a benefit/risk assessment. If the purpose isn't to deny entry as a form of punishment, then freedom of speech presumably wouldn't come into the picture. Intent matters. Prioritization isn't necessarily punishment.
“My wife is a would-be immigrant so I am sympathetic”
Or sometimes
“My partner is half X So I understand discrimination against X”
Or even sometimes
“I am in category Y so there’s no way I can hate people in category Y”
I don’t think that line of reasoning makes sense. People often times carve out mental exemptions for people close to them that they care about, not for everyone in the same category. Further more, it is totally possible to love a person but not every quality about them. Also just because you are close to someone doesn’t mean you understand entirely their struggles
It's possible that you're often similarly misreading statements from others as implying causality. It's absolutely faulty logic to say I have relationship X to Y so I can't be Y. However, P(Not against Y | my relationship X to Y) > P(Not against Y) may certainly be valid reasoning.
I certainly can't think of any Y where I'd take a tonights-bar-tab bar bet against the statement that people married to Y are more sympathetic on average toward Y than the average person.
It's preemptive defense against inevitable knee-jerk "you're anti-immigrant" ad hominem attacks. I wish I didn't feel the need to preempt such diversions, but that's the world in which we live.
What you are talking about here, is that we as a people, have no right to listen to what you say and make decisions based on that. What you are saying is that if there's a guy outside your house yelling that you're an evil bad person who should rot in hell, you obligated to ignore his words in your decision to open your door and invite him in, because he has a right to say anything he wants. Do you... Do you get robbed a lot? If you do, you should observe the world around you, and make decisions based on those observations. This will greatly help you not get robbed a lot.
That was a strong Kool-Aid. There are universal human rights, there is no need to grant applicants USA constitutional rights to respect the former. It's a matter of decency and honesty, you are not free to infringe the privacy of others just because they weren't born in a different soil than you.
Of course, human rights are constantly abused at several degrees all over the world, but geez, at least try to be discrete about it.
I don’t see how denying a visa constitutes infringing on someone’s freedom of speech at the level of a human rights violation.
> infringe the privacy of others
These are public social media posts. Not private messages.
Privacy is one of those analienable universal human rights recognized by the UN, and demanding to see the social networks of other is infringing it, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. It's not only a faceless government employee(s) probing and ogling your social life, social networks allow private messaging, which becomes non-private after these unreasonable demands.
Don't normalize the erosion of human rights.
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's a good one.
Is every other country going to follow suit? Would you have the US disband their military as well? Or should they just deploy it without any sort of intelligence gathering?
I do think we should not have these specific agencies, because they've proven themselves too corrupt, and we should consider a "defund" strategy for our entire military industrial complex, completely dismantling the existing systems and replacing them with something a little less... evil? Certainly scaled back by a few orders of magnitude.
But then the only reason these agencies act the way they do and get away with it is because the government wants it that way. So maybe just burn it all down, I don't know. I'm starting to think Thomas Jefferson was right and we should at least try to shoot all the politicians, rip up the Constitution and start over every 20 years.
So not a realistic suggestion, no.
> Would you have the US disband their military as well?
Honestly I think the world would be better off if the US only had the national guard and a small purely defensive coastal navy like Japan. Maybe not randomly fuck up Asian or Middle Eastern countries every few years in the name of oil or Jesus or kickbacks to Lockheed Martin.
[0] I'm assuming there's some kind of 4A-equivalent bound on government behavior in the Calvinball soup that is the UK 'constitution'
Admittance to the United States is not a universal right. If I wanted to move to Europe right now, it is a lengthy painful process just like an alien trying to move to the US.
Applicants will be screened. Reviewing what you say publicly about the United States as part of that process is not a privacy violation. If you are making statements that you want to blow up buildings or steal nuclear secrets, it is very reasonable to deny you entry.
Moving permanently is one thing, but Europeans have to go through that bullshit even for tourist visas, while all y'all need is your passport because our dumbass politicians didn't insist on reciprocity.
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...
Most Europeans get to use the quick and relatively cheap shortcut of ESTA/VWP rather than needing to apply for a full tourist visa, though indeed there are exceptions based on nationality or personal history.
> while all y'all need is your passport because our dumbass politicians didn't insist on reciprocity.
The EU has been working on their own version of ESTA called ETIAS for many years now, which has been repeatedly delayed for EU-internal reasons that as far as I've read have nothing to do with US pressure, like technical/IT delays and a request from France for the related Entry/Exit System not to begin before the Paris Olympics. ETIAS is currently expected to begin operation in 2025 and will apply to US citizens just as it will to every other Schengen-visa exempt third-country nationality.
Since you said "Europeans" rather than "EU citizens" or "Schengen citizens", I'll recognize that the UK is still in Europe and note that they're preparing to do the same kind of thing, with their system to be called ETA and also intended to include US citizens once fully implemented.
So that will bring approximate reciprocity, again with the exception of those Europeans who don't qualify for the US ESTA/VWP system.
You still need to pass the CBP exam, have your social media profile scanned by them, or you can be rejected at the border because the CBP agent doesn't like you got convicted for pot at 18.
You Americans don't have to endure any of that to enter the Schengen area.
> ETIAS is currently expected to begin operation in 2025 and will apply to US citizens just as it will to every other Schengen-visa exempt third-country nationality.
I have zero reason to believe ETIAS will be ready by that date.
We agree that the US government border rules for noncitizens are far too invasive and harsh, especially as to drug rules - though the core of that harshness comes from laws passed by the elected legislators, with only part of it coming from agency regulations and culture.
Much of that awfulness is not about a lack of reciprocity for the visa exemption: what you describe applies even to people who do need visas, not only to those who qualify for the Visa Waiver Program.
Even Canadians, who normally are truly exempt from needing any kind of pre-approval at all to show up at a US port of entry with a Canadian passport, can still be interrogated and refused for all the same reasons as any European - they can just skip the advance approval, aside from any waiver they might need due to previously having been found inadmissible, but they are still rolling the dice at the border as with any other visitor.
By contrast, people who need US visas have far more expense and hassle to deal with than the still-bad bullshit that the US puts most European tourists through - on top of most of that bullshit, not instead of it.
> You Americans don't have to endure any of that to enter the Schengen area.
Very true, but again, this difference between the systems is far more pervasive than just any lack of reciprocity. The European immigration and border control systems are just plain more humane and less broken than the US equivalents, regardless of which countries exempt which other countries from which documentation requirements.
> I have zero reason to believe ETIAS will be ready by that date.
It’s true that it’s been delayed an absurd number of times so far and could get delayed again. But the biggest reason for the duration of the latest delay is just a short-term political matter rather than anything technical: France wants to delay the Entry/Exit System until after the Paris Olympics, and ETIAS depends on that working well for some months.
From what I’ve read, the IT side of things is close to ready. We will see. I would not be surprised by further small delays, but I do expect these systems to begin operating within a few years instead of beyond that time.
Then there’s the US who has consistently held that those rules only apply on US soil (hence Guantanamo) and that the rules only really apply when it comes to US citizens (lawful permanent residents get a slightly more diminished “store brand” version of the protections).
Practically all of these have a gaping martial exemption.
That said, as far as I know, martial law has only been declared at the federal level once, in 1863 during the Civil War, so I’m not sure what that has the do with anything.
First, Johnson v. Eisentrager (the one case on which your “consistently held” seems to be anchored), was narrower than that, only holding that US courts lacked jurisdiction to hear challenges from enemy military prisoners who at no point had been held in the US.
Second, it and the idea that those detained by the US government have no rights cognizable under US law or enforceable in US courts were subsequently contradicted by Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (US citizens detained in conflict, even entirely overseas, retain Constitutional due process rights), Rasul v. Bush (military detainees have right to habeas corpus review of detention in federal court; this and subsequent cases in this list all deal with non-citizen detainees), Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (in a habeas challenge as allowed under Rasul v. Bush, finding the military commissions instituted at that time at Guatanamo illegal under both the Geneva Conventions and the UCMJ), and Boumedienne v. Bush (section of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 purporting to strip detainees of habeas corpus rights was unconstitutional and detainees retained those rights.)
The US owes nothing to the people who want to immigrate here, certainly not due process. If they don't like the US, its policies or citizens, the US should find that out. It is the duty of US immigration to scan their posts for anti-US sentiment, as well as adherence to any ideology that is corrosive to democratic society.
They are effectively applying for a job as US citizen, and should comport themselves accordingly.
How could it? Undocumented people are undocumented. The harder / longer the process the more likely people are just find ways to forgo engaging with it. Especially if it looks like positive outcome is unlikely.
Would need to see a citation on the rest of you've said as it sounds a little like right wing talking point.
Seems a bit rich the descendants of many migrants are pulling up the ladder.
Also, "illegal alien" is an outdated term because implies an individual's entire existence as "illegal," which is dehumanizing.
The "outdated" critique is Orwellian - an attempt to language police and limit the scope of debate by reframing the words and terms used to discuss a complex issue. Newspeak's purpose is to limit freedom of thought and control the population. The aim is to restrict the range of ideas people can express, thereby limiting the range of ideas they can even consider. When we start policing the term "illegal immigrant," we run the risk of narrowing our debate and discussion surrounding immigration policy.
It's also worth considering the consistency of this argument across different domains. For example, nobody is advocating for softening the term "illegal miner". In these contexts, the term "illegal" serves to accurately describe an action that is against the law. It doesn't mean that the individual’s entire identity is reduced to that action, but it does indicate that the action itself is not in compliance with existing laws.
>control the population
Isn't that what immigration departments do?
The phrase "illegal alien" appears in federal law. <https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1365>
Isn't it a good idea to vet people before you let them enter your country? Why would you let in someone that is hostile to your country? Especially these days with so many individuals being driven by nefarious ideologies?
I don't want them! Why should we be required to ignore their personal feelings?
There's a long list of people who want into the US. We should prioritize the people who actually like the US, this doesn't feel controversial.
The ability to systematically analyze a person's life and communications and then derive a "desirability" score is the thing that's controversial.
Similar to the subject of client-side scanning for abusive material, the issue is not that anyone supports the abuse. The issues all stem from the implications of the underlying technology and embracing "the ends justify the means".
If the answer is no, then you might be missing a lot of people that have nefarious intent, where you could have prevented that by looking at their social media posts. If the answer is yes, then you have to delegate to something / someone. Maybe an AI might be better than a human at spotting warning signs.
But there’s a vast possibility space between no vetting and the systematic analysis of all public information about a person. Especially when social media - a place where people are rarely their authentic selves - is a primary source. There is far more stupid stuff being said on social media than dangerous stuff. But the two can be nearly indistinguishable without appropriate context. People will be denied entry for being spicy far more than for legitimate reasons I’d imagine.
Not to mention that there is a significant amount of public information that should not be public in the first place. Its availability is not a justification for its use in this way. By > If the answer is no, then you might be missing a lot of people that have nefarious intent, where you could have prevented that by looking at their social media posts.
I can’t get on board with this framing. It feels similar to the arguments for more cameras in public places. Put a camera on every corner. They’re public after all. But once you start feeding those cameras into a central AI that can track your every move, they’re no longer just cameras, and the very idea of what it means to be in public no longer means the same thing that it did for most of human civilization.
Again, I’m not saying they should look at anything. But I think it’s also necessary to raise red flags when emerging tech will be used in increasingly invasive ways by governments.
Obviously someone who is 80% positive and 20% "here are some improvements" is one thing, but if they spend all their time whining about US imperialism, I do not want them.
You have the right to just show up with newly printed residency and demand change, but no right to be liked for it.
Are foreigners not allowed to criticize anything?
On one hand, techno-surveillance is scary and it rarely marches backward, so letting this happen for citizenship applications will have a chilling effect on foreign intellectuals, and train people who may consider entering this country some day not to speak their mind.
I understand the theory that we don't want people coming here who rant all day saying "US is a terrorist state and something should be done about it" on social media. But I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze.
Maybe closer to the intended end goal here – is a country allowed to deny a visa to a person entering that country, if the level of criticism is on the extreme end?
A country is allowed to deny a visa for any reason.
To put another way, there is no fundamental human right for a non-American to enter the United States.
It's a wonder why people put themselves through the hassle of legal immigration where they have basically no rights, when they could just sneak in and be covered by most civil rights and entitled due process in the unlikely event they do something dumb or unlucky enough to get caught.
I think this is where we get into the nuance of standards. Calling us out on our foreign policy? Fair game. Calling us fundamentally immoral or heretical? No thanks.
This seems fairly disingenuous. Nobody said foreigners shouldn't be allowed to criticize anything. Rather, the "for" argument is that their criticism should be analyzed to see if it would be detrimental to let them into the country.
"My house" isn't exactly a good analogy for "the country", but to be overly simplistic
1. Your house is an ugly color
2. Your house is a blight on the land; you should be tossed to the street and it burned to the ground
Those are both criticisms of the the house. They are entirely different things to consider when deciding whether that person should be allowed in the house.
The majority of human beings are not people who hold values I want in this country. Do I want someone who thinks that heretics should be killed? Women should be circumcised? China should be sterilizing minorities in Xinjiang?
Liberal democracy works when the population has a common baseline of enlightened values and mutual respect for the system they work within, I am not apologizing for attempting to maintain that.
The thing about America is that it's very good[1] at passing on its politics to immigrants and their children. This is why you get lots of immigrants who want to pull the ladder up behind themselves and ban immigrants, which is a hilariously illiberal policy that would actually harm themselves. The far-right Islamofascist nutters who want to kill heretics and forcibly mutilate women's vaginas will, given enough time, absolutely break bread with the far-right Christofascist nutters who want to ban books they don't like from schools and ban trans people from public spaces[2]. Given enough time, even tankies[3] could get in on this and form a pan-authoritarian cult of illiberality and oppression.
Insamuch as this necessitates any compromise of liberal values for the sake of the continued existence of liberalism in the United States, such a compromise should be limited to the least invasive change necessary to preserve human rights. Banning immigrants for having grumbles about the US smells like collective punishment, and we don't actually need that. Illiberal and far-right thinking is spread by very small numbers of influential and socially connected grifters, and targeting just them would be less invasive.
Furthermore, we don't actually know what speech US ICE is using to deny visas, just that they're using machine learning to scan for some kind of speech. They might be solely targeting foreign liberals because that's what they consider a security threat to themselves.
[0] Aided by Elon Musk selling bluechecks and algorithmic boosts on Xitter for $8/mo
[1] Relative to other countries, of course, who basically don't even try
[2] We don't have to get into why they would do this - or how they'd excuse it given their mutual hatred for one another. Crank magnetism is a powerful force.
[3] Far-left authoritarians.
That doesn't mean that every person has the right to be in America simply because they want to.
Maybe the AI is better, maybe it is worse. On some occasions CBP just takes a good look at you for whiteness or whatever and just waives you through without even opening the passport; other days you end up with your car in 1500 pieces. It's mostly voodoo.
We want to live in a world with no discrimination of people's rights based on their hardware, because that's generally not changeable. But we will absolutely still continue to discriminate on the software running in your brain, because not only is that changeable, but certain software is incompatible with the social order that gives us the privilege to rise above our baser nature.
Why is not changeable relevant?
> But we will absolutely still continue to discriminate on the software running in your brain.
The First Amendment is rather exactly about not doing that.
Because I at least hold the ideal that we should judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. No individual gets to choose the genes they inherit, but they do have some level of agency over how they choose to operate in the world.
> The First Amendment is rather exactly about not doing that.
True, but the system in place that enforces the first amendment and the entire Constitution ultimately depends on the vast majority of people to agree and comply with that base ideology. The system of governance isn't omnipotent or omnipresent enough to defend against a large enough minority of the population becoming hostile to these ideals.
This is the big reason why Trump's violation of the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power is so horrific, because it threatened the foundation of consensus that lets our system operate as a democracy that non destructively lets the best ideas and leaders rise to the top.
Sure, we shouldn't judge people by their skin color. That isn’t what I asked.
Lots of important elements of character are pretty immutable, too.
There is massive variety of culture and ideology between people that share the same phenotypes. And some of that culture and ideology is incompatible with the preservation of our democratic norm of peaceful competition of ideas and peaceful transfer of power.
This is also why racial profiling is not only morally wrong, but practically problematic. It's lazy and sloppy guardianship that's targeting a perceived proxy for the threat rather than the actual threat.
The threat is not the genes, it's the memes. And if our societal defense system is targeting genes, then the memes will eventually figure out how to find different hosts that can bypass those defenses.
> There is massive variety of culture and ideology between people that share the same phenotypes
The missing note here is that some phenotype cluster near areas with proximate similar culture. If I ban anyone speaking Mandarin or with Chinese accent I'm not really banning a phenotype but everyone knows what this actually does. I think you very much understand how solidified cultural traits are used as backdoor to profile phenotype.
Why live somewhere you have no connections to and dislike when you prefer your arguably-nicer home country?
Can someone enlighten me? I’ve worked with dozens of those people
It’s especially wild when you talk to Indians who INSIST America is the greatest nation in history and that we have no idea how lucky we are.
Look at opportunities/salary/living condition/infrastructure and it's clear. Of course USA is not perfect and has lots of problems, and many people go back to their country after getting a degree from a US institution, for very good reasons. But still a lot of people stay for the benefits.
e.g. someone is sharing a post about killing children in Gaza or any other highly controversial topic. Gov employee wastes resources try to check this person, he gets a stressful afternoon. System is prone to abuse and would have a lot of false positives.
Problem is that it has chilling effects on folks who wouldn’t cause harm and would just be critical of us business or policy or culture.
I consider myself moderately liberal.
If you have an non citizen coming to US , and this person is hostile to US, why this person allowed to come here. It's a free world, if you don't like democracy, go to the other part of non-free world.
Not letting hostile people in, it's a corner stone of any national security. It has nothing to do with liberalism. They are simply doing their job.
And yes, you can find lots ways how US is not a free country. But at least US declare this as an idea. There are countries, Iran , Russia , China have other priorities.
Obviously there's little good reason to admit someone who wants to overthrow the government (there are already enough of those locally) but literally anyone who says that the US is less than perfect?
I certainly don't want this decision to be in the hands of an unaccountable and capricious ICE officers. I've personally experienced just a taste of how petty they can be and have little reason to doubt that they are routinely spiteful assholes.
My own views are far from moderate in many respects, and I don't think ICE would like them very much.
[0] https://www.surgehq.ai//blog/30-percent-of-googles-reddit-em...
This may have been what happened to me as I didnt get an H1B 3 years in a row so I had to leave and the company i worked for had to get me an L1 visa. Im not an avid social media poster or anyrhing either, but I have been critical of the US online.
Not getting H1B as someone with an MS diploma felt like it was personal (and not a "lottery" that the visa is claimed to be)
Inb4, then why come? Well, before I came I never knew any of this stuff, as i was a foreigner in high school. Came over for college, stayed for a position at a FAANG corp. "The american dream"
You criticize the French government in your investigative reporting.
You take a visit to France again next time.
They prohibit your entry based on your articles. All else equal you otherwise would have been granted entry.
===
The United States’ Constitution has a first amendment that does not discern between citizen or not. It applies to the laws that can be made.
Same goes for the other bill of rights.
Obviously a non citizen should not have the right to vote, but a non citizen still should have and they do have the right of freedom of speech or the right to a speedy trial…
Otherwise the laws you made are not impartial.
When a part of the constitution wants to describe the requirement of citizen or not, it will specifically say.
"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
"No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen."
But some of the restrictions may be on how the constitution was worded. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," implies that that person has an interest in the United States, instead of being a visitor. So only nonimmigrant visa aliens have a hard time, but there are exceptions.
Even so, law that exists does not imply that it is correct or just with other laws. The AI tool in the article or some of the restrictions are up for debate on their legality. The same way why people debate gun restrictions on their constitutionality.
I said either:
the clause "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," modifies the requirement to those with an interest in the United States, instead of visitors.
OR
The current laws are unjust by being unconstitutional.
I'm just looking for a single logically consistent person to admit that aliens (not just those with a hunting license or other credential) are people with all the rights of people, or not people and not protected specifically by what is narrowed to protection of people. You were painfully close.
For the record I'm in agreement, although imo neither answer is wrong as long as consistent.
What is insane to me is that almost no one including the courts want to address that harsh logical inconsistency through much beyond high IQ handwaving.
I was just saying that that clause in the second amendment could be the only possible way a court could argue otherwise. Because the constitution states:
"nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
So, only that clause "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," could modify that. But I don't think it does, but a lot of Supreme Court justices have a lot of ideas about the clause.
Only should voting (including running for office) and immigration should be tied to citizenship. I think we have the same ideas. A lot of people in the comments were arguing that non citizens should not have freedom of speech. That is pretty weird and unconstitutional.
Sure, I respect the fact that I've been allowed to live and work here, but what sort of democracy doesn't allow critical thoughts of a government, country, culture etc?
There's a huge difference between if I said something like "The UK state should be destroyed, all British citizens are heathens" as opposed to what I usually say which is more "there's a huge class and wealth gap problem in the UK", "both sides of the gov here are only interested in filling their own pockets with money", "why does my tier 5 visa years not count towards ILR like my tier 2 does, why is UK so anti immigration when their entire services economy replies upon it?", "British people are resistant to change and cling onto old ideas", "British politeness is actually a myth, rudeness is just expressed differently here, the politeness is often insincere".
All things that are critical of the UK but valid viewpoints that others may disagree with. I couldn't imagine not being able to be freely critical of the place you live. What's the point in voting, otherwise?