U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#401

Post by michaelt » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #387

zafiro17 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of people who call this "due diligence." Receiving permission to visit a country is a privilege, not a right. This trend of wanting better data before making decisions is the natural result of there being better data available on which to make it. Banks, loan officers, job offerers, and now nation states are each equally right in taking advantage of whatever you've chosen to put out there in public. I…

> Receiving permission to visit a country is a privilege, not a right. It shouldn't be. All border checks should be abolished. All passports should be abolished. Free people in the world should be able to travel between countries freely, and without having to justify themselves or ask permission, just as they can travel between cities within a country freely.

And if 30,000 camouflaged, balaclava-clad Russian speakers happen to cross the border from Russia to Ukraine, they're just exercising their right as free people :)

Seriously though, it depends on what responsibilities you think the government has towards the people. If a country with high taxes and generous public services bordered a country with low taxes and minimal public services, you can see why problems could arise if people could cross between at will.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#402

Post by jstanley » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #401

jstanley wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Receiving permission to visit a country is a privilege, not a right. It shouldn't be. All border checks should be abolished. All passports should be abolished. Free people in the world should be able to travel between countries freely, and without having to justify themselves or ask permission, just as they can travel between cities within a country freely.

And if 30,000 camouflaged, balaclava-clad Russian speakers happen to cross the border from Russia to Ukraine, they're just exercising their right as free people :) Seriously though, it depends on what responsibilities you think the government has towards the people. If a country with high taxes and generous public services bordered a country with low taxes and minimal public services, you can see why problems could a…

What happens if 30,000 camouflaged, balaclava-clad Russian speakers happen to travel from Moscow to St. Petersburg?

I don't see the problem.

If they start shooting at people, then that's a crime and you should arrest them for that, regardless of whether you had any border checks.

And even if you do have border checks, if 30,000 people storm your border at once, a handful of guys with truncheons and paper forms aren't going to be much of a deterrent.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#403

Post by nraynaud » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #334

nraynaud wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under the previous administration, there was a special policy for Iranian students made so that their visa date interview collide with the beginning of their semester and they would be under-enrolled at the critical date and lose their visa immediately. Some universities had to create special programs with different dates for those students. (now they are outright banned from applying for a visa)

Do you have a source for that? This claim sounds especially far-fetched given that the number of Iranian college students in the US more tripled over that time https://www.iie.org/Research-and-Insights/Open-Doors/Data/In...

Sorry, private discussion with a key player at a university.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#404

Post by lazerpants » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

odiroot wrote: post #375

ExcelSaga wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just the US though, the whole ultra-surveillance shtick is very much an international problem. Here in the UK it’s not that great either, and China is full on dystopia. I’m not excusing the US, but we need to accept that this isn’t just the Americans, it’s more and more of the world.

No one asked to see my phone or any device when I entered China two times through two different cities. No one cared about by email addresses or social media accounts.

I work for a major academic medical institution. When our researchers attend conferences in China, or go there to give talks, we have to make sure to lock down their computers or give them burners that don't have important research documents. There have been many allegations of government sponsored agents entering hotel rooms while guest were out to copy drives of prominent American researchers.

Source: People at my institution who I put a lot of faith in (but are maybe paranoid).

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#405

Post by PurpleBoxDragon » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 3:05 PM UTC

opportune wrote: post #301

larkeith wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't to go after everyone who fails to completely or accurately answer, but rather to provide a pretext for the deportation of people the government disfavor but lack a criminal case against; for example, an immigrant opposition leader, protestor, or whistleblower.

Yes exactly. Laws which de jure make everyone a criminal simply give the government an excuse to de facto imprison or expel whomever they want, and should be avoided at all costs

This is basically how all laws currently work. The prosecutor gets to pick who to charge (or sometimes gets to pick which case to put in front of a grand jury, though generally the process is so one sided that the prosecutor effectively has full control over what evidence the grand jury sees and is thus able to sway their decision either way). We would need to change the system to remove the choice of enforcing criminal charges from all, but this will be a very bad thing to do given current laws (just look at issues with teens sending photos to each other, what would happen if we really cracked down on all cases of illegal photos being shared).

The system appears designed so that once you are targeted, they can easily crush you by bringing forth laws generally ignored for the average person not targeted by the legal system. It needs to be fixed, but there is almost no political will to fix it and any fixes will be a drastic deviation from what we currently know.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#406

Post by sirmoveon » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 3:15 PM UTC

Already happening

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#407

Post by dmode » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

throwaway82729 wrote: post #189

dmode wrote: post #32

Trump administration has been increasingly hostile to legal immigrants, so this doesn’t surprise me one bit. Everyday there is a new policy change in USCIS designed to screw immigrants, whose only crime is working on high paid jobs. I am on the verge of losing my work permit after having lived here for 12 years and working in high tech jobs in leading companies.

Can I ask what your situation is? I've been here for 16 years and no green card in sight. For those claiming cheap labor, my employer pays me $500k/yr and none of it was negotiated.

I have 14 yrs work experience in Software Dev and Product Management. USCIS is claiming that I don’t have work experience for a PM job, even though I have an MBA from a top school in the US. I made 300K last year

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#408

Post by KozmoNau7 » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #390

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is objectively a terrible person and an even worse politician. His approval reasons would be in the dumps, media influence or not. You're making a pretty wild assertion, that Trump's and Obama's approval ratings would be equal if it wasn't for media influence. How do you propose normalizing that? How would you do that? Please give an example that doesn't entail making up numbers from subjective whole cloth.

Trump is objectively a terrible person and an even worse politician. That's quite the objective statement statement you have there. How would you do that? Please give an example that doesn't entail making up numbers from subjective whole cloth. It would be relatively simple, though it would involve some data collection. Count the number of positive and negative stories published at various time frames, and come out w…

>"That's quite the objective statement statement you have there."

I feel very confident making that statement. Considering his personal and professional conduct, his backpedaling on earlier statements, his absolutely disastrously inept attempts at diplomacy and a whole host of other issues, it is accurate to say that he is absolutely not a person you would want to have any sort of relationship with, what so ever.

>"It would be relatively simple"

You're arguing from a biased starting point. You're assuming that media coverage is the most important factor in a president's popularity rating, not his actual actions and fuckups.

>"show what Obama's disapproval numbers would be if he had suffered the same media bias as Trump."

>"the whole point is that comparing Obama's disapproval numbers to Trump's is not an apples-to-apples comparison because of the extraordinary bias of the media against Trump."

You're ignoring the massive backlash, smear campaigns and outright hate spewed by the right-wing media during Obama's presidency. I'm not sure if you've just forgotten it, or if you're willfully ignoring it, but it was everywhere, endless pandering to birtherism, outright racism, doomsay prophecies that he would turn the US into a socialism/communist hellhole, that he would take everyone's guns, put all white people into camps, the whole spiel.

In contrast, most of the coverage of Trump is simply detaling what new stupid thing he did.

But if it's so simple, why haven't you done it yet?

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#409

Post by KozmoNau7 » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

richardknop wrote: post #380

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you deny that Trump was extremely active in birtherism and claiming Obama wasn't eligible for the position as president? There are countless articles, videos, tweets (from The Donald himself) documenting it. Instead you attack specific sources, in an attempt to discredit the facts.

He was certainly very active in birtherism but so was Hillary when she ran against Obama which is what people are forgetting about :)

"But but but HILLARY!" is not a valid argument.

Both were shitty candidates, Trump was just the shittiest of the two.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#410

Post by Idontagree » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 3:32 PM UTC

aero142 wrote: post #84

Idontagree wrote: post #66

Doesn't some other countries already do this? I was asked about my LinkedIn for a work visa in Canada.

Canada is very aggressive about searching for "hate speech" at the border. This includes mandating that you turn over your phone and searching through your texts, emails and any linked accounts for keywords. This is personal experience.

I'll say that wasn't my experience, it was just about trying to verify my position, but maybe they decided to look into other stuff, they certainly didnt tell me or take my phone.