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.
sagarm · 15h ago
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.
watwut · 13h ago
In the short term, it will allow genocide to be finished. In the long term, it is quite possible it will be forgotten, excused and lied about. Eventually everyone will move on as if nothing happened, except small minority
adastra22 · 11h ago
“Genocide to be finished”? What bizarro reality are you living in?
nielsbot · 4h ago
Happened to Native Americans and many other people in history. Not sure why it’s impossible.
Centigonal · 1d ago
It was originally about that, but this expansion appears to be more general, no?
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 23h ago
It's unclear from the passage. The "significant expansion" sounds like it could be referring to who is being examined or the violations authorities are looking for or both.
rexpop · 4h ago
This is not at all about protecting Israel. That's just an antisemitic pretense—a way to scapegoat "the Jews" for all this authoritarian crap.
aaomidi · 1d ago
America first etc etc
barbazoo · 1d ago
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.
hearsathought · 1d ago
Fall semester is about to start. Don't think the timing is a coincidence. Israel really doesn't like people criticizing and protesting against them. Especially on college campuses.
barbazoo · 1d ago
They don't care really about Israel I think, what leverage would they have to pressure the US admin to do anything? I think this is about being critical of the people in government in general. If everyone is at risk of being deported, who would go and protest anything? That would certainly make me think twice about it.
hearsathought · 1d ago
They have been very open and vocal about their reason. And it's not just the republicans. The democrats also support it as well. Pretty much the only thing the republicans and democrats both agree on.
Tostino · 12h ago
Democratic politicians* the voters very much do not support Israel.
SuperNinKenDo · 1d ago
I don't understand how you can ask that question with a straight face given the last 50 odd years.
e40 · 12h ago
Absolutely. Every single one of those 55M people will think twice about every aspect of their life. It will be debilitating for many of them.
How long can support for this last?
mindslight · 21h ago
Speaking of fear, don't forget that "deport" doesn't mean that you will just be moved to a different country, but rather there is a good chance you will end up in a concentration camp.
hodgehog11 · 1d ago
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.
angarg12 · 18h ago
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.
astro1138 · 1d ago
Is Freedom of Speech only meant for US citizens?
verzali · 1d ago
No, next they'll be reviewing citizenships too in order to make sure you haven't said anything mean about Trump or Vance online. Oh sorry, to make sure you haven't said anything that goes against the fundamental values of the United States.
goyagoji · 1d ago
They better be careful, saying something true online is less work than the renunciation process to demand the freedoms everyone else is born with.
csomar · 12h ago
You must dig deeper into US history. Citizenship was revoked or frozen en masse at certain period for different races. Actually the “free” USA only happened after world war 2 and it was probably because the US was becoming the super power.
This current administration wants to end interventionism which means the old US (100% white/all Protestant) might be coming back. If you are not in that category you must start planning accordingly.
MandieD · 2h ago
It was also revoked for American women who married foreign citizens until the early 20th century - in fact, an awful lot of my parents' friends for some reason still assume that I lost mine and automatically became a German citizen when I married my husband.
Ha. Getting German citizenship has become easier, but it's still far from automatic, and at least the way things have been the past 100 years or so, I (native-born to native-born US citizens in the US, white) would have to jump through a lot of hoops to get rid of my US citizenship.
sekh60 · 1d ago
Seriously, would love to have not had to spent 3 years backfilling paperwork, and paying $2000+CAD (after lawyer fees) to renounce.
chewz · 1d ago
Ostracism was core of Athenian democracy, and yes it was politicized often.
No democracy for enemies of democracy.
wqaatwt · 4h ago
It was reserved to highly ranked influential politicians, though. Also quite rare as far as we can tell.
Herring · 1d ago
Naturalized citizens are up next.
pfannkuchen · 14h ago
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.
greatgib · 8h ago
The fell fast on the slippery slope in US.
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...
aiauthoritydev · 1d ago
Well, the Israeli child abusing officer has left the country.
cyanydeez · 1d ago
I'm sure there's more. The type of people who clamor for power often do so for the ability to do amoral things.
It's unsuprising theres a mix of nazis and israelis at the helm of America's "self interest" and there's criminals, child molestors, rapists constantly being squeezed out.
xnx · 1d ago
Does this include H-1B fraud?
rchaud · 1d ago
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.
tdsanchez · 1d ago
It should.
cyanydeez · 1d ago
Anything that implicates businesses, unles clearly run by dirty communists, will be ignored.
slt2021 · 1d ago
Why is this flagged, can anyone explain?
Seems relevant since a lot of tech ppl are on visa
drewbug01 · 1d ago
The reason for the flag is always the same: because they don’t want to talk about it here.
The real question is: why don’t people want to talk about it? I’ve found it typically falls into three camps:
One group flags these kinds of stories because they’re exhausted, and can’t stomach any more. I feel bad for this group, and I understand the impulse.
Another group flags because suppressing information about what the administration is up to aligns with their personal ideology. This is the more dangerous group, and I’m always sad to see people coming out in support of awful stuff like this.
The last group flags it because it annoys them, and they don’t want to engage with it. It makes them uncomfortable and they feel it doesn’t impact them. They point to the HN guidelines and say it’s not relevant. It is, they’re just lucky enough to have not been affected personally by anything yet.
I pity the last group, honestly.
barbazoo · 1d ago
There are obviously N groups but one you're missing might be the people that just don't think it's a topic that fits the purpose of this space, at least how it's stated in the guidelines.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I can't help but feel that stories like these fall under "off-topic".
rchaud · 1d ago
How can a story about US visas be off topic when YC itself posts a visa AMA with their immigration lawyer several times a year?
barbazoo · 1d ago
> How can a story about US visas be off topic
It's extensively covered by mainstream media and it's unrelated to tech other than the few individuals that have a visa that's relevant here. Does this article really "gratify one's intellectual curiosity"?
darth_avocado · 1d ago
You missed the second half of the question you responded to. That changes the context.
ImJamal · 20h ago
You have to have some sort of cut off since anything can relevant to people in tech.
youngtaff · 1d ago
The story about the British Queen dying wasn’t flagged as off topic and that was exhaustively covered by media world wide
Jackson__ · 1d ago
Possibly a fourth group of startup founders and investors that don't want H1B pipelines to dry up as a result of constant bad news.
foogazi · 1d ago
> Possibly a fourth group of startup founders and investors that don't want H1B pipelines to dry up as a result of constant bad news.
Seems far fetched, if anything H1B are limited BECAUSE of the H1B cap/lottery system
metalman · 2h ago
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.
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.
anigbrowl · 1d ago
Historically this isn't exceptional, and is arguably a reversion ot hte mean following the disruption of a WW2 and its aftershocks.
Seems inflated. Reliable estimates run around 2/3 of that. Higher numbers always seem anchored only by handwavey 'there must be more because reasons', which is why you regularly see people claiming sums of 20m, 30m, 40m. The current president has a habit of picking arbitrary numbers based on his feelings, but that doesn't sem a very reliable system to me.
Tourist visas, Business visas, temporary work visas
There are 55m visas, majority of which are non immigrant visas.
staringback · 1d ago
Think about what a "visa holder" might be and then try your comment again.
slt2021 · 1d ago
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
barbazoo · 1d ago
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.
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.
anigbrowl · 1d ago
Sure, f you trust the administration to rely on objective standards rather than making arbitrary and capricious decisions at scale. Looking at social media, I see a lot of people (including GOP county chairs, example below) saying things like 'deport them all, let them reapply for re-entry,' which kinda proves the argument that it was never about illegal immigration in the first place.
If you have ever had to apply for a Schengen Visa to enter the EU, then you will know how strict the EU is (even hotels want to see your passport and record it).
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 1d ago
Nobody is saying it should be as easy to immigrate to the US as it is to immigrate to The Netherlands, they are saying that immigrating to the US should be easier than this administration is making it.
andsoitis · 1d ago
> Nobody is saying it should be as easy to immigrate to the US as it is to immigrate to The Netherlands, they are saying that immigrating to the US should be easier than this administration is making it.
Ah, we're not talking about the same thing.
I drew the comparison to The Netherlands' list of reasons for why they would revoke or deny your VISA (which is what the article is about w.r.t. the US), and it is not dissimilar.
I wasn't contrasting ease of immigration between the two countries. It is a mixed bag, but for educated immigrants the it is generally easier to immigrate to The Netherlands than the US (if you are doing so outside the law, I'm going to guess it is much easier "to make it work" in the US than in The Netherlands - both in terms of getting in but also to make a living). There are some notable barriers like you cannot have dual citizenship (the US allows). On the other hand, demand for immigration to the US is much higher, which, together with more arcane and byzantine regulations result in other structural barriers.
boston_clone · 1d ago
It sounds like you're moving goalposts. You started by saying:
> Nothing really to see here. Normal course of business [...]
And now you're shifting your position by saying "well, its more difficult elsewhere so this must be fine".
You shouldn't worry, though - as long as the visa holders support the KKK and not a free Palestine, they can stay.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 1d ago
> Nothing really to see here. Normal course of business [...]
> well, its more difficult elsewhere so this must be fine
I don't see a difference between these. The "more difficult elsewhere" in the supposedly shifted goalposts is the "normal course of business" in the first comment.
boston_clone · 1d ago
How can you not?
Changing our policies to make the process more chaotic is not our normal course of business, nor is it “nothing to see” as it will directly affect people.
I feel that both of those are plainly evident.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 20h ago
Yeah, you're right; I did not understand the context. This is obviously a motte and bailey.
"Nothing to see here" (even referring to the title alone) is the hard to defend position and when that's called out as ridiculous they say that they were just talking about the actually normal things that countries do for immigration, which nobody is going to argue with.
The end goal being for the "nothing to see here" that everybody is looking at to become normal.
andsoitis · 1d ago
> Changing our policies
FWIW, part of my engagement is to try to understand the real risk vs. alarmism (i.e. as reported).
My understanding is that the material change is that there is somewhat more leeway for the government to interpret what it means to be "to be of good moral character".
You should know that when you apply for citizenship, for example, they have for many years asked you about traffic violations, which, theoretically have always been allowable as input in deciding "of good moral character".
Another is whether you have ever supported the Communist Party or been involved in prostitution, and a whole host of other things. Check out page 14 ("General Eligibility and Inadmissability Grounds") on the form: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-4...
I have not read the actual policy change, so I don't know whether it has actually changed or whether it is just being more rigorously applied AND/OR targeted (biased) more.
If you can articulate it precisely, that would be nice for all of us here since the article is not sufficiently objective or illuminating.
boston_clone · 1d ago
> If you can articulate it precisely, that would be nice for all of us
Strongly agree - how nice would it be if this administration cared enough to do just that?
In any case, your understanding is severely incorrect; please read the second half of the article. Here are some helpful paragraphs:
>The administration has steadily imposed more restrictions and requirements on visa applicants, including requiring them to submit to in-person interviews. The review of all visa holders appears to be a significant expansion of what had initially been a process focused mainly on students who have been involved in what the government perceives as pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel activity.
>Officials say the reviews will include all visa holders’ social media accounts, law enforcement and immigration records in their home countries, along with any actionable violations of U.S. law committed while they were in the United States.
>The reviews will include new tools for data collection on past, present and future visa applicants, including a complete scouring of social media sites made possible by new requirements introduced earlier this year. Those make it mandatory for privacy switches on cellphones and other electronic devices or apps to be turned off when an applicant appears for a visa interview.
So, looks like we have intentional ambiguity coupled with mass surveillance. Do you not see how that is problematic?
> [...] the article is not sufficiently objective.
Might there be some confusion between objectivity and your own bias? Playing the innocent enlighted centrist about immigration policies this far in to 2025 seems either wildly ignorant or dangerously veiled.
Here are some links from several months ago for understanding and "engagement":
>The administration has steadily imposed more restrictions and requirements on visa applicants, including requiring them to submit to in-person interviews.
This is NOT new.
In most cases, in-person interviews have always been required at a US embassy or consulate abroad. I know this not only from personal experience but you can also double check if you don't believe me: https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://travel.s...
There are certain exceptions:
- interview waivers: certain applications may qualify to skip, e.g. children under 14, adults 80+, some renewing applications
- certain visa categories: diplomats and some official travelers.
That said, US consular officers have always had the discretion to require an interview even if you might otherwise qualify for a waiver.
>Officials say the reviews will include all visa holders’ social media accounts, law enforcement and immigration records in their home countries, along with any actionable violations of U.S. law committed while they were in the United States.
Do you object to all of these or only some? I can see objecting to social media account review, but surely actionable violations of US law committed while in the US any reasonable person can agree that that can be cause for denying or revoking your VISA. Surely?
boston_clone · 18h ago
You've been intellectually dishonest on so, so many fronts. How unfortunate for us both.
That recording is actually unlawful. They can look at it, and compare it with your face, write up the address in their systems, and that should be it. This practice of copying passports/id-cards is malpractice. The (european) issuers actually say so!
stevenwoo · 1d ago
It's certainly to be some sort of political litmus test with a quick perusal of social media for anything other than rabid Trump support along with a test for darker tone of skin or country of origin that is out of favor, to bulk up their failure to kick out enough migrants (not coming close to their stated goals of 1000s per day) through the means they have used so far with fake justification, ticky tacky legal and paperwork issues used to justify deportation.
immibis · 1d ago
Whether or not the person has ever attended an anti-Israel protest is an objective standard that is not arbitrary. There are lots of bad things to say, but it's not arbitrary or unobjective.
anigbrowl · 1d ago
The 'arbitrary and capricious' part (a legal term of art) is in saying things like attending a protest constitute grounds for deportation absent any published rules or guidance to this effect. While statute law gives wide discretion to the Secretary of State and Attorney-General in immigration matters, there's still an obligation for transparency and process, which is why there's a whole infrastructure set up for contestation, appeals and so on. You cannot just start issuing orders of removal based on, say, whether people like waffles.
As a side note, Israel isn't a US state the last time I looked. I doubt that a blanket ban on political expression could survive a first amendment challenge.
andsoitis · 1d ago
> is in saying things like attending a protest constitute grounds for deportation absent any published rules or guidance to this effect.
The law is clear that if you support a terrorist group, your visa application can be denied or your current visa revoked.
If we take Hamas for example, they are designated a terrorist group by: European Union, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Paraguay, United Kingdom, United States, Organization of American States, Switzerland[1]
If you are in the US on a non-immigrant visa (you are a guest) and you go to a rally in support of Hamas, I struggle to understand why it would be controversial that the US can revoke your visa ("your permission to be in the US").
6) policy & institutional (applies to governments, not individuals, so not relevant "in this context")
7) community & social (e.g. public awareness, volunteer mobilization, cultural legitimacy)
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 1d ago
I appreciate the answer. I guess "attending a protest" falls under "public awareness" or "cultural legitimacy" if the protest is specifically about the organization being unpopular or demonized. Sticking with the Gaza situation example, most protests are along the lines of "Israel shouldn't do that" and not "Hamas needs more support". Claiming otherwise seems massively disingenuous; it's obvious that people oppose terrorism and Israel's actions for largely the same reasons.
andsoitis · 1d ago
> Sticking with the Gaza situation example, most protests are along the lines of "Israel shouldn't do that" and not "Hamas needs more support".
Yes, here is the nuance, which I concur with and I would hope most reasonable people could agree on.
In practice, protests are a mix of people but onlookers take a binary stance. It is not going to be difficult to see at protest a poster or cameras capture someone shouting something like "globalize the infitada! or or death to America".
Complicating matters further, protest organizers and the protesters themselves have more of a fluid behavior and motivations - it is not a club where membership is controlled and patrolled, a protest's mission is usually a little vague and fluid, etc.
And that is, I think, where the real risk lies - you are at a protest and you can find yourself surrounded by others who ARE supporting Hamas even if you're not and you get lumped together.
This happens on "the right" as well. You'll have some Neo-Nazi's in a conservative protest against XYZ, and now all of a sudden they're all Nazi's.
It is deeply unfortunate.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 22h ago
> And that is, I think, where the real risk lies - you are at a protest and you can find yourself surrounded by others who ARE supporting Hamas even if you're not and you get lumped together.
This is incredibly dubious. Not only the idea that I would find myself around any number of people explicitly supporting Hamas but also the idea that I would be confused as being part of them. (Like, I can just walk away and tell others that I disagree with the dumb shit they're saying.) People are told not to say dumb shit at the protests I go to; anyone saying something explicitly pro-violence is an obvious agitator.
> This happens on "the right" as well. You'll have some Neo-Nazi's in a conservative protest against XYZ, and now all of a sudden they're all Nazi's.
This is not an equivalent comparison. It's not like there's a grassroots movement of Hamas sympathizers in America that have inspired songs to be written about them. But neo-Nazis... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYKAQZUAbHU
But don't you think it's at least a little bit telling that you automatically jump to neo-Nazis showing up at "conservative protests"? What makes the protest "conservative" and why do you present it as a truism that such an event would appeal to neo-Nazis? One might assume that the neo-Nazis are loudly told to FUCK OFF when they show up... well, anywhere, a "conservative protest" included, but one would also imagine that they'd eventually stop showing up to such events, at least not openly as neo-Nazis. It seems like they keep showing up to them because they are welcome at them.
andsoitis · 18h ago
> This is not an equivalent comparison. It's not like there's a grassroots movement of Hamas sympathizers in America
Counter evidence from, for example, 2024 news report: “Pro-Hamas group that helped organize college protests is a 'sham charity,' Treasury says”
The Taliban sucks shit. I also thought that the war in Afghanistan was a monstrous campaign of death and I publicly said this throughout the war. Should I be punished by the state for "supporting a terrorist group?"
I'm very sorry but advocating for not bombing hospitals in Gaza is not "supporting a terrorist group."
andsoitis · 1d ago
> I'm very sorry but advocating for not bombing hospitals in Gaza is not "supporting a terrorist group."
I don't think we disagree on this.
In practice, protests are a mix of people but onlookers take a binary stance. It is not going to be difficult to see at protest a poster or cameras capture someone shouting something like "globalize the infitada! or or death to America".
Complicating matters further, protest organizers and the protesters themselves have more of a fluid behavior and motivations - it is not a club where membership is controlled and patrolled, a protest's mission is usually a little vague and fluid, etc.
And that is, I think, where the real risk lies - you are at a protest and you can find yourself surrounded by others who ARE supporting Hamas even if you're not and you get lumped together.
This happens on "the right" as well. You'll have some Neo-Nazi's in a conservative protest against XYZ, and now all of a sudden they're all Nazi's.
It is deeply unfortunate.
No comments yet
boston_clone · 1d ago
An actual rally for Hamas? Or rather deliberate conflation of supporting Palestinians and their right to resist occupiers and genocide in their home country? [0].
How is protesting against the genocide suddenly becomes “supporting a terrorist group”?
Only material support for terror group (fundraising and sending $$$ to people in the OFAC list)
andsoitis · 1d ago
See my reply to sibling about what people generally mean with the word "support".
JumpCrisscross · 1d ago
> attended an anti-Israel protest
The test may not be arbitrary. How the test was chosen is. A CAPTCHA is an objective test; forcing everyone in high school to take one is arbitrary.
(Also, to my knowledge, mere attendance wouldn’t constitute a lawful reason to eject. Material support would have to have been offered, e.g. fundraising for Hamas.
slt2021 · 1d ago
if it is not arbitrary, as you claim, surely it must be encoded in law and history of past precedents, right ?
Israeli people need to read the 1st Amendment that we have in the US
immibis · 1d ago
The USA does have a long history of punishing people severely for protesting.
No comments yet
lajetl · 1d ago
They're going to do a few keyword searches for things "Gaza" and "universal healthcare" and try to mass-deport anyone who used those words on social media. And if no one tries to stop them, then it will happen. Habeas Corpus is gone.
josefritzishere · 1d ago
That's probably true.
aiauthoritydev · 1d ago
This is not normal course of business at all. This is probably a wave of capricious decision making to "meet quota" because they are not able to find and catch illegal immigrants to make news.
_fs · 1d ago
You say that as if Palantir does not already have all this information ready for AI analysis today.
ux266478 · 1d ago
Or that the NSA doesn't have it all centralized, tagged and sorted.
seanicus · 1d ago
Which is why the Trump admin will just default to Betar US, repping a foreign entity ethnostate, for their list of visas to revoke.
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.
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?
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.
This current administration wants to end interventionism which means the old US (100% white/all Protestant) might be coming back. If you are not in that category you must start planning accordingly.
Ha. Getting German citizenship has become easier, but it's still far from automatic, and at least the way things have been the past 100 years or so, I (native-born to native-born US citizens in the US, white) would have to jump through a lot of hoops to get rid of my US citizenship.
No democracy for enemies of democracy.
It's unsuprising theres a mix of nazis and israelis at the helm of America's "self interest" and there's criminals, child molestors, rapists constantly being squeezed out.
Targeting H1b would also result in much stronger legal opposition. It takes a year to process less than 100k H1B applications annually, and companies have to pay thousands processing fees for each one. The goal of this is to discourage foreign students, refugee claimants and tourist visa holders from coming to America.
Seems relevant since a lot of tech ppl are on visa
The real question is: why don’t people want to talk about it? I’ve found it typically falls into three camps:
One group flags these kinds of stories because they’re exhausted, and can’t stomach any more. I feel bad for this group, and I understand the impulse.
Another group flags because suppressing information about what the administration is up to aligns with their personal ideology. This is the more dangerous group, and I’m always sad to see people coming out in support of awful stuff like this.
The last group flags it because it annoys them, and they don’t want to engage with it. It makes them uncomfortable and they feel it doesn’t impact them. They point to the HN guidelines and say it’s not relevant. It is, they’re just lucky enough to have not been affected personally by anything yet.
I pity the last group, honestly.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I can't help but feel that stories like these fall under "off-topic".
It's extensively covered by mainstream media and it's unrelated to tech other than the few individuals that have a visa that's relevant here. Does this article really "gratify one's intellectual curiosity"?
Seems far fetched, if anything H1B are limited BECAUSE of the H1B cap/lottery system
I had no idea it was that many.
I thought 18M undocumented was a high %age!
342M people in the US. 16% visa holders
I wonder how that compares to other countries?
https://www.census.gov/popclock/
https://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born/about....
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...
I thought 18M undocumented was a high %age!
Seems inflated. Reliable estimates run around 2/3 of that. Higher numbers always seem anchored only by handwavey 'there must be more because reasons', which is why you regularly see people claiming sums of 20m, 30m, 40m. The current president has a habit of picking arbitrary numbers based on his feelings, but that doesn't sem a very reliable system to me.
https://ohss.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/2024_0418_o...
There are 55m visas, majority of which are non immigrant visas.
Social media posts have been scrubbed, list of people have been prepared, just a matter of cross-checking whether they are non-citizens and can be deported
People are already spread too thin to revolt anyway, the billionaire masters made sure of that by lowering wages until people were just near enough the poverty line that losing their job would mean ruin. Can't go protest if you have to put food on the table. Now you also have to worry not to be taken out of your community and sent to a random 3rd country. I bet that makes people be quiet real quick. I bet we'll see a widening of what's un-acceptable by the administration.
https://x.com/BoFrenchTX/status/1958611053119775213
Let's take The Netherlands as an example to get a feel.
- Pronouncement of undesirability: https://ind.nl/en/pronouncement-of-undesirability
- Entry bans: https://ind.nl/en/entry-ban
If you have ever had to apply for a Schengen Visa to enter the EU, then you will know how strict the EU is (even hotels want to see your passport and record it).
Ah, we're not talking about the same thing.
I drew the comparison to The Netherlands' list of reasons for why they would revoke or deny your VISA (which is what the article is about w.r.t. the US), and it is not dissimilar.
I wasn't contrasting ease of immigration between the two countries. It is a mixed bag, but for educated immigrants the it is generally easier to immigrate to The Netherlands than the US (if you are doing so outside the law, I'm going to guess it is much easier "to make it work" in the US than in The Netherlands - both in terms of getting in but also to make a living). There are some notable barriers like you cannot have dual citizenship (the US allows). On the other hand, demand for immigration to the US is much higher, which, together with more arcane and byzantine regulations result in other structural barriers.
> Nothing really to see here. Normal course of business [...]
And now you're shifting your position by saying "well, its more difficult elsewhere so this must be fine".
You shouldn't worry, though - as long as the visa holders support the KKK and not a free Palestine, they can stay.
> well, its more difficult elsewhere so this must be fine
I don't see a difference between these. The "more difficult elsewhere" in the supposedly shifted goalposts is the "normal course of business" in the first comment.
Changing our policies to make the process more chaotic is not our normal course of business, nor is it “nothing to see” as it will directly affect people.
I feel that both of those are plainly evident.
"Nothing to see here" (even referring to the title alone) is the hard to defend position and when that's called out as ridiculous they say that they were just talking about the actually normal things that countries do for immigration, which nobody is going to argue with.
The end goal being for the "nothing to see here" that everybody is looking at to become normal.
FWIW, part of my engagement is to try to understand the real risk vs. alarmism (i.e. as reported).
My understanding is that the material change is that there is somewhat more leeway for the government to interpret what it means to be "to be of good moral character".
You should know that when you apply for citizenship, for example, they have for many years asked you about traffic violations, which, theoretically have always been allowable as input in deciding "of good moral character".
Another is whether you have ever supported the Communist Party or been involved in prostitution, and a whole host of other things. Check out page 14 ("General Eligibility and Inadmissability Grounds") on the form: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-4...
I have not read the actual policy change, so I don't know whether it has actually changed or whether it is just being more rigorously applied AND/OR targeted (biased) more.
If you can articulate it precisely, that would be nice for all of us here since the article is not sufficiently objective or illuminating.
Strongly agree - how nice would it be if this administration cared enough to do just that?
In any case, your understanding is severely incorrect; please read the second half of the article. Here are some helpful paragraphs:
>The administration has steadily imposed more restrictions and requirements on visa applicants, including requiring them to submit to in-person interviews. The review of all visa holders appears to be a significant expansion of what had initially been a process focused mainly on students who have been involved in what the government perceives as pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel activity.
>Officials say the reviews will include all visa holders’ social media accounts, law enforcement and immigration records in their home countries, along with any actionable violations of U.S. law committed while they were in the United States.
>The reviews will include new tools for data collection on past, present and future visa applicants, including a complete scouring of social media sites made possible by new requirements introduced earlier this year. Those make it mandatory for privacy switches on cellphones and other electronic devices or apps to be turned off when an applicant appears for a visa interview.
So, looks like we have intentional ambiguity coupled with mass surveillance. Do you not see how that is problematic?
> [...] the article is not sufficiently objective.
Might there be some confusion between objectivity and your own bias? Playing the innocent enlighted centrist about immigration policies this far in to 2025 seems either wildly ignorant or dangerously veiled.
Here are some links from several months ago for understanding and "engagement":
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/deporting-in...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-scraps-guidance-limit...
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/06/27/dhs-terminates-haiti-tps...
This is NOT new. In most cases, in-person interviews have always been required at a US embassy or consulate abroad. I know this not only from personal experience but you can also double check if you don't believe me: https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://travel.s...
There are certain exceptions:
- interview waivers: certain applications may qualify to skip, e.g. children under 14, adults 80+, some renewing applications
- certain visa categories: diplomats and some official travelers.
That said, US consular officers have always had the discretion to require an interview even if you might otherwise qualify for a waiver.
>Officials say the reviews will include all visa holders’ social media accounts, law enforcement and immigration records in their home countries, along with any actionable violations of U.S. law committed while they were in the United States.
Do you object to all of these or only some? I can see objecting to social media account review, but surely actionable violations of US law committed while in the US any reasonable person can agree that that can be cause for denying or revoking your VISA. Surely?
https://www.visalawyerblog.com/trump-administration-limits-i...
As a side note, Israel isn't a US state the last time I looked. I doubt that a blanket ban on political expression could survive a first amendment challenge.
The law is clear that if you support a terrorist group, your visa application can be denied or your current visa revoked.
If we take Hamas for example, they are designated a terrorist group by: European Union, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Paraguay, United Kingdom, United States, Organization of American States, Switzerland[1]
If you are in the US on a non-immigrant visa (you are a guest) and you go to a rally in support of Hamas, I struggle to understand why it would be controversial that the US can revoke your visa ("your permission to be in the US").
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_g...
What does "support" mean in this context?
1) financial (e.g. donations, membership fees, investments)
2) human resources (e.g. volunteers, staffing, training)
3) material & in-kind (e.g. equipment, office space, supplies)
4) knowledge & expertise (e.g advisory, R&D, workshops, training)
5) networking & partnerships (e.g. collaboration, referrals, advocacy alliances)
6) policy & institutional (applies to governments, not individuals, so not relevant "in this context")
7) community & social (e.g. public awareness, volunteer mobilization, cultural legitimacy)
Yes, here is the nuance, which I concur with and I would hope most reasonable people could agree on.
In practice, protests are a mix of people but onlookers take a binary stance. It is not going to be difficult to see at protest a poster or cameras capture someone shouting something like "globalize the infitada! or or death to America".
Complicating matters further, protest organizers and the protesters themselves have more of a fluid behavior and motivations - it is not a club where membership is controlled and patrolled, a protest's mission is usually a little vague and fluid, etc.
And that is, I think, where the real risk lies - you are at a protest and you can find yourself surrounded by others who ARE supporting Hamas even if you're not and you get lumped together.
This happens on "the right" as well. You'll have some Neo-Nazi's in a conservative protest against XYZ, and now all of a sudden they're all Nazi's.
It is deeply unfortunate.
This is incredibly dubious. Not only the idea that I would find myself around any number of people explicitly supporting Hamas but also the idea that I would be confused as being part of them. (Like, I can just walk away and tell others that I disagree with the dumb shit they're saying.) People are told not to say dumb shit at the protests I go to; anyone saying something explicitly pro-violence is an obvious agitator.
> This happens on "the right" as well. You'll have some Neo-Nazi's in a conservative protest against XYZ, and now all of a sudden they're all Nazi's.
This is not an equivalent comparison. It's not like there's a grassroots movement of Hamas sympathizers in America that have inspired songs to be written about them. But neo-Nazis... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYKAQZUAbHU
But don't you think it's at least a little bit telling that you automatically jump to neo-Nazis showing up at "conservative protests"? What makes the protest "conservative" and why do you present it as a truism that such an event would appeal to neo-Nazis? One might assume that the neo-Nazis are loudly told to FUCK OFF when they show up... well, anywhere, a "conservative protest" included, but one would also imagine that they'd eventually stop showing up to such events, at least not openly as neo-Nazis. It seems like they keep showing up to them because they are welcome at them.
Counter evidence from, for example, 2024 news report: “Pro-Hamas group that helped organize college protests is a 'sham charity,' Treasury says”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/-hamas-group-helped-org...
I'm very sorry but advocating for not bombing hospitals in Gaza is not "supporting a terrorist group."
I don't think we disagree on this.
In practice, protests are a mix of people but onlookers take a binary stance. It is not going to be difficult to see at protest a poster or cameras capture someone shouting something like "globalize the infitada! or or death to America".
Complicating matters further, protest organizers and the protesters themselves have more of a fluid behavior and motivations - it is not a club where membership is controlled and patrolled, a protest's mission is usually a little vague and fluid, etc.
And that is, I think, where the real risk lies - you are at a protest and you can find yourself surrounded by others who ARE supporting Hamas even if you're not and you get lumped together.
This happens on "the right" as well. You'll have some Neo-Nazi's in a conservative protest against XYZ, and now all of a sudden they're all Nazi's.
It is deeply unfortunate.
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Stop bullshitting people here.
0. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/deporting-in...
Only material support for terror group (fundraising and sending $$$ to people in the OFAC list)
The test may not be arbitrary. How the test was chosen is. A CAPTCHA is an objective test; forcing everyone in high school to take one is arbitrary.
(Also, to my knowledge, mere attendance wouldn’t constitute a lawful reason to eject. Material support would have to have been offered, e.g. fundraising for Hamas.
Israeli people need to read the 1st Amendment that we have in the US
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