Following by way of on a pledge he made whereas nonetheless within the U.S. Senate, Secretary of State Marco Rubio started limiting visa insurance policies on Wednesday to guard Individuals.
Rubio first introduced visa restrictions for overseas nationals who censor Individuals.
A couple of hours later, he introduced the U.S. State Division was working with the Division of Homeland Safety to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese language college students, together with these with connections to the Chinese language Communist Social gathering or learning in vital fields.
The State Division additionally might be revising visa standards to reinforce scrutiny of all future visa functions from the Individuals’s Republic of China and Hong Kong, he mentioned, including that the brand new visa insurance policies would “put America first, not China.”
The announcement got here as the best variety of Chinese language nationals illegally entered the U.S. in recorded historical past underneath the Biden administration, at the very least 176,000, The Middle Sq. reported.
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Whereas within the Senate, Rubio and others expressed alarm about nationwide safety threats posed by the Chinese language Communist Social gathering, Chinese language intelligence outposts working within the U.S., Chinese language and different unlawful border crossers breaching U.S. navy bases, The Middle Sq. reported.
The primary visa restriction coverage was carried out to guard Individuals’ First Modification proper to free speech, a proper, Rubio argues, units America “aside as a beacon of freedom world wide.”
“At the same time as we take motion to reject censorship at dwelling, we see troubling situations of overseas governments and overseas officers selecting up the slack,” he mentioned. “In some situations, overseas officers have taken flagrant censorship actions towards U.S. tech corporations and U.S. residents and residents once they haven’t any authority to take action.”
The brand new visa restriction coverage applies to overseas nationals who censor protected expression in the US.
“It’s unacceptable for overseas officers to challenge or threaten arrest warrants on U.S. residents or U.S. residents for social media posts on American platforms whereas bodily current on U.S. soil,” Rubio mentioned. “It’s equally unacceptable for overseas officers to demand that American tech platforms undertake world content material moderation insurance policies or interact in censorship exercise that reaches past their authority and into the US. We is not going to tolerate encroachments upon American sovereignty, particularly when such encroachments undermine the train of our elementary proper to free speech.”
Part 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 authorizes the Secretary of State “to render inadmissible any alien” whose entry into the U.S. “would have probably critical opposed overseas coverage penalties for the US.”
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The visa restrictions may apply to sure members of the family.
The coverage is a marked reversal of Biden administration insurance policies, which as an alternative of focusing on threats to Individuals for removing and visa revocation, prolonged short-term protecting standing to roughly a million unlawful overseas nationals, together with Palestinians and pro-Hamas rioters who threatened Jewish and Israeli Individuals, The Middle Sq. reported.
Syndicated with permission from The Middle Sq..
