Nothing really to see here. Normal course of business, except maybe that reviewing all 55m systematically is gonna take a while with all the database joins you will have to do across disparate systems.
this is done to deport all pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist visa holders, with the help of Palantir.
Social media posts have been scrubbed, list of people have been prepared, just a matter of cross-checking whether they are non-citizens and can be deported
I bet it's much more a campaign to instil fear in people with non-citizen status in general and for them to watch what they're doing and saying in general.
People are already spread too thin to revolt anyway, the billionaire masters made sure of that by lowering wages until people were just near enough the poverty line that losing their job would mean ruin. Can't go protest if you have to put food on the table. Now you also have to worry not to be taken out of your community and sent to a random 3rd country. I bet that makes people be quiet real quick. I bet we'll see a widening of what's un-acceptable by the administration.
There is no way 55 million visas can be reviewed in any reasonable amount of time (cue the "AI can do it" comments). The number of H1B visa holders is a tiny fraction of 55m, if they cared about reviewing those, it'd require a lot less in time and resources.
Targeting H1b would also result in much stronger legal opposition. It takes a year to process less than 100k H1B applications annually, and companies have to pay thousands processing fees for each one. The goal of this is to discourage foreign students, refugee claimants and tourist visa holders from coming to America.
Birthright citizenship revocation being applied retroactively is definitely lower hanging fruit than that. If that happens I would be concerned about naturalized citizens, but only then.
Denaturalization is a process which exists and has been used for years, scaling up the intensity of its use is a much easier thing (and one which both the current [0] and the previous [1] Trump Administration actually have done) than ending birthright citizenship.
Since it is, in fact, already happening, I think it is a mistake to view it as something to worry about only if and when the administration succeeds in overturning birthright citizenship.
How many "mistakes" are going to be made in this process, I wonder? A colleague of mine had his student's visa status suddenly revoked a few months ago. Fortunately, the student's lawyers successfully argued in court that there were no grounds for revocation. It still isn't clear why any of it happened.
This isn't discussed enough. One argument I've heard is that "this only applies to people who break the law".
One thing to consider is how easy is to make minor mistakes that technically count as an infraction. When acting in good faith, the administration can acknowledge this and promptly fix it, as it happened to me during my immigration process.
Then there are random mistakes out of your control. For example, when I first moved to the US and tried to get insurance for my car, I received extremely high quotes from the insurer. When I inquired why, they replied that my file showed several traffic infractions years ago in a different state. Simply clarifying that they'd mistaken me for another person was enough to fix it. Imagine if instead they deported me to a prison in El Salvador without a chance to defend myself.
And this is not talking shadier practices, such as changing the rules so that certain things suddenly become offenses, or simply fabricating evidence against someone.
Surely includes a lot of tourist visas, and many of these people might be outside the US already but the visa just hasn't expired yet. Or people who need to come frequently for business trips.
What does non-immigrant actually mean? The h1b/l1b that is hugely popular in tech are both legally defined as “non-immigrant” visas, yet both include very widely used legal paths to permanent residency and citizenship for the holders - immigration.
My point being, this distinction may not mean what it might appear with a layman’s or dictionary based understanding of the phrase “non-immigrant visa”.
very relevant, as the govenment may be mixing up the perfect own goal hat trick, by undermining american competitiveness in tech, agriculture, and so called "essential" workers through depertations and closing of institutions, while trying to "tarrify" the world into submission, to the point that the US postal service is jamming and juddering from what must be the memo epocolypse.
proof?, Xi is smiling again, after years of bieng kinda grim looking.
This might be obvious to others but to me this story really made it clear to me that this is probably much about fear. Fear of stepping out of line, drawing attention to yourself and as a result at best getting into trouble, or at worst deported.
The admin makes it clear, if you have opposing views and share them, you're not welcome here.
Well if they had followed the news they would have already thought twice about everything they said and did since Snowden showed the entire US population has been under constant surveillance for decades now. At the time most people didn't quite care because their country "did this in their best interest and it would never turn authoritarian". Yay land of the free.
How much of that surveillance was kept I wonder? I don't consider it unimaginable that someone would get expelled for saying something on WhatsApp 15 years ago.
The question is whether people will still want to put up with this. Why even bother going to the US anymore? I certainly won't even visit for work events any longer. I will refuse such requests. Privately I don't want to anyway.
I'm not going to go to a country that eyes me with suspicion. Especially because I'm very LGBT friendly too.
The review of all visa holders appears to be a significant expansion of what had initially been a process focused mainly on students who have been involved in what the government perceives as pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel activity.
Seems unlikely this will convince anyone that disagrees with Israeli policy that they're wrong. Quite the opposite, I imagine. That can't be good for long term support of Israel by America.
Officials say the reviews will include all visa holders’ social media accounts, law enforcement and immigration records in their home countries, along with any actionable violations of U.S. law committed while they were in the United States.
The reviews will include new tools for data collection on past, present and future visa applicants, including a complete scouring of social media sites made possible by new requirements introduced earlier this year. Those make it mandatory for privacy switches on cellphones and other electronic devices or apps to be turned off when an applicant appears for a visa interview.
"I have nothing to hide" kind of people will get a nice surprise when they will be deported for liking a post against Trump...
"Those make it mandatory for privacy switches on cellphones and other electronic devices or apps to be _turned off_ when an applicant appears for a _visa interview_."
This is direct violation of GDPR and similar law. US may go fuck themselves with such interviews. I will never set my foot in that dumpster. It also sets really bad precedent - EU will retaliate and soon we all will have to unlock and present our phones at any (semi)official procedure. Hell, even when board a train or a bus ... What a joke! Time to tell personal electronic devices good bye.
36 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 76.2 ms ] threadSocial media posts have been scrubbed, list of people have been prepared, just a matter of cross-checking whether they are non-citizens and can be deported
People are already spread too thin to revolt anyway, the billionaire masters made sure of that by lowering wages until people were just near enough the poverty line that losing their job would mean ruin. Can't go protest if you have to put food on the table. Now you also have to worry not to be taken out of your community and sent to a random 3rd country. I bet that makes people be quiet real quick. I bet we'll see a widening of what's un-acceptable by the administration.
Targeting H1b would also result in much stronger legal opposition. It takes a year to process less than 100k H1B applications annually, and companies have to pay thousands processing fees for each one. The goal of this is to discourage foreign students, refugee claimants and tourist visa holders from coming to America.
Since it is, in fact, already happening, I think it is a mistake to view it as something to worry about only if and when the administration succeeds in overturning birthright citizenship.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/06/30/nx-s1-5445398/denaturalizatio...
[1] https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/trump-administration-seek...
One thing to consider is how easy is to make minor mistakes that technically count as an infraction. When acting in good faith, the administration can acknowledge this and promptly fix it, as it happened to me during my immigration process.
Then there are random mistakes out of your control. For example, when I first moved to the US and tried to get insurance for my car, I received extremely high quotes from the insurer. When I inquired why, they replied that my file showed several traffic infractions years ago in a different state. Simply clarifying that they'd mistaken me for another person was enough to fix it. Imagine if instead they deported me to a prison in El Salvador without a chance to defend myself.
And this is not talking shadier practices, such as changing the rules so that certain things suddenly become offenses, or simply fabricating evidence against someone.
I had no idea it was that many.
I thought 18M undocumented was a high %age!
342M people in the US. 16% visa holders
I wonder how that compares to other countries?
https://www.census.gov/popclock/
https://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born/about....
There are 55m visas, majority of which are non immigrant visas.
My point being, this distinction may not mean what it might appear with a layman’s or dictionary based understanding of the phrase “non-immigrant visa”.
Seems relevant since a lot of tech ppl are on visa
The admin makes it clear, if you have opposing views and share them, you're not welcome here.
How long can support for this last?
How much of that surveillance was kept I wonder? I don't consider it unimaginable that someone would get expelled for saying something on WhatsApp 15 years ago.
I'm not going to go to a country that eyes me with suspicion. Especially because I'm very LGBT friendly too.
From the article:
The review of all visa holders appears to be a significant expansion of what had initially been a process focused mainly on students who have been involved in what the government perceives as pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel activity.