Final week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered U.S. consulate and embassy officers to scour the social media accounts of worldwide college students hoping to attend Harvard. The plan, in response to a replica of a diplomatic cable obtained by Politico “may even function a pilot for expanded screening and vetting of visa candidates” and “will likely be expanded over time.”
Whereas Rubio has already began an effort to investigate potential worldwide college students’ social media habits—final week, he directed officers to close down the processing of scholar visas so a social media plan may very well be enacted—the small print of this particular plan are notably invasive. Most troubling, if a scholar’s account is personal, or if they do not have one, it might price them the flexibility to safe a visa.
“The shortage of any on-line presence, or having social media accounts restricted to ‘personal’ or with restricted visibility, could also be reflective of evasiveness and name into query the applicant’s credibility,” reads the directive.
Additional, this scrutiny will apply to extra than simply Harvard worldwide college students. Rubio directed diplomatic officers to “conduct a whole screening of the net presence of any nonimmigrant visa applicant looking for to journey to Harvard College for any goal,” that means that overseas audio system and a few workers might additionally see their social media postings scrutinized. “If you’re not personally and utterly happy that the applicant, throughout his time in america, will have interaction in actions constant together with his non-immigrant visa standing, it is best to refuse the visa,” the directive reads, in response to Reuters.
It is arduous to not interpret Rubio’s directive as a name to ideologically discriminate in opposition to potential worldwide college students on a staggering scale. That is particularly doubtless on condition that Rubio has already personally intervened to cancel worldwide college students’ visas for actions as innocuous as attending a pro-Palestine demonstration or writing an anti-Israel op-ed. And with a French Scientist denied entry to the U.S. in March over anti-Trump views, it isn’t in any respect clear that college students will solely be turned away for posts that point out they may very well be a believable menace to U.S. nationwide safety.
Rubio’s order is just the newest in a string of makes an attempt to cull charges of worldwide college students alongside ideological strains. In March, Rubio introduced that he had canceled the visas of greater than 300 college students for campus activism. “We gave you a visa to come back and research and get a level, not change into a social activist that tears up our college campuses. And if we have given you a visa and also you resolve to do this, we will take it away,” Rubio stated throughout a press convention. “We do not need it in our nation. Return and do it in your nation. However you are not going to do it in our nation.”
