Comment by boston_clone 2 days 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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":
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...
> 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.