Rights vanish at the border: How US immigration rules strip privacy and free expression - Ivo Vegter

Key topics:US requires visa applicants to expose private social media for screeningPolicy targets only anti-semitism, ignoring other forms of bigotryNew rules undermine privacy, free speech, and the rule of law.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Ivo Vegter*.The US has adopted policies to screen visitors’ social media for anti-semitism (and only anti-semitism). Private profiles will have to be made public.As part of Trump 2.0’s ongoing campaign to pressure academic institutions to suppress the speech of visiting international students, and to discourage international students from choosing America for their studies in the first place, the administration has imposed invasive new visa screening policies.All non-citizen arrivals in the US will now be screened for “antisemitic activity on social media”, and applicants for student or exchange programme visas will additionally be required to make all private social media accounts public so immigration officials can peruse their content.These policies violate both privacy and free expression rights, not only under US domestic law, which arguably does not apply until admission to the US has been granted, but also under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights..First Lady of the World.The prime mover behind that declaration, which is foundational to the post-war liberal-democratic world order, was America’s own longest-serving first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. She received a standing ovation when it was adopted in 1948, and was hailed as the “First Lady of the World” by President Harry Truman for her efforts.It states: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence,” and, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”Undirected surveillance without probable cause constitutes arbitrary interference, and therefore violates both those clauses of the Declaration..Defend to the death.Don’t get me wrong. I strongly disagree with exactly the people the Trump administration is going after.I think even those motivated by genuine concern for the people of Palestine are mistaken in their one-sided support, that many implicitly or explicitly support despotic terror groups like Hamas, and that Israel does not merit all the hostility directed towards it by left-wing activists.However, as Evelyn Beatrice Hall imagined Voltaire saying: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”Expressing support for one side or another in an international conflict is a matter of conscience, and a matter of free speech. Unlike having rendered material aid to terrorist organisations or a country’s enemies, mere opinions are not grounds to be discriminated against by a national government..Rule of law.Prohibiting “hostile attitudes towards our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles”, as the policy does, is vague. It leaves decisions about who will and will not be permitted a visa to the discretionary interpretation of individual immigration agents, instead of establishing clear rules. That violates the rule of law.Rest assured the policy’s application will not be limited to extremists who are truly dangerous, but to anyone who criticises the present administration, Christianity, right-wing nationalism, or conservative values.Likewise, “anti-semitic activity” is never clearly defined, and could include any and all criticism of Israel, or merely the sentiment that Palestinians ought to be free or have their own state.Moreover, the fact that the administration is acting solely against “anti-semitism” suggests that it welcomes bigotry and prejudice of any other kind. That it is not acting in exactly the same way against right-wing racists and militant fascists says a lot about the nature of the administration.And that it does not treat all political activism equally is a violation of equality under the law..Private is private.The demand to make private social media accounts public is a gross violation of privacy.Many people have private accounts for excellent reasons. They keep them private to escape from abusive exes or hostile family situations, to avoid online harassment, to maintain professional boundaries, to prevent reprisals from authoritarian governments, or to discuss deeply personal problems such as mental health or sexual assault.All these reasons are justified. Not only does the US government have no right to access such information, but it compounds the harm by forcing people to make that information public for all the world to see.The new US visa policy will make the internet a far more dangerous place for would-be visitors to the country. It will expose private information to fraudsters, identity thieves, stalkers, hostile foreign governments, prospective employers, and marketers, none of whom have a right to any more personal information about people than they are willing to disclose..Not using social media constitutes a threat.Worse, if one practices good online privacy hygiene, and does not maintain social media accounts that document one’s life for marketers to hoover up, the US will consider that evidence of an “effort to evade or hide certain activity”.Without an extensive social media footprint that is sympathetic to the US and to the Trump administration, visa applicants will be considered a threat to US national security.If you do not want present or future employers, or teachers, or parents, to see the videos of tipsy dancing or romantic kisses you share with your closest friends, the US will consider you a danger to its national interests.And if you simply keep your private life private by not sharing your every passing thought with the world, you’re also considered a threat.This new policy is just as invasive as requiring people to hand over copies of their private journals and penalising them for not keeping regular diaries of their activities.It forces people to spy on themselves for the benefit of the US government..Caught in the dragnet.The need for privacy extends especially to political activists, or others who address sensitive political or human rights issues, such as journalists. They are often at risk of personal attack, harassment, or even imprisonment by brutal dictatorships. Yet the US policy on social media disclosure is explicitly targeted at activists and people who “demonstrate a history of political activism”.The mass surveillance of public and private social media accounts of visa applicants affects not only the privacy of the applicants themselves. Friends, family, and acquaintances are also caught in the surveillance dragnet.The same way that marketers can tell a lot about you even if you don’t subscribe to their platforms by analysing who you know and interact with, intelligence agents can build up a detailed picture of other people’s lives simply from analysing the private communication of a relative handful of targets.And there are no rules about what the US authorities can do with the data they collect, since the immediate subjects are not US citizens, and are therefore not protected by US law before they legally enter the country.Intelligence agencies can (and do) exploit this data however they see fit, both against foreigners who never intended to travel to the US, and against US citizens who happen to communicate with visa applicants..No value.The policy to screen social media data of prospective visa applicants, first introduced by the previous Trump administration in 2019, has “no value” in detecting potential terrorists, according to declassified intelligence documents obtained by The New York Times.(This is also true for the rest of the security theatre surrounding air travel and immigration in the US, but that is an entirely different story, long and fascinating though it is.)All this new policy does is force consular services in foreign countries to reduce the number of visa applications they process (which is likely intended), and eliminate applicants based solely on the political opinions they express, or their refusal to express any (which is definitely intended).The US is supposed to be a beacon of freedom and human rights in the world. Yet every day it slips further down the slippery slope to a fascist dictatorship..*Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist..This article was originally published by Daily Friend and has been republished with permission.

Rights vanish at the border: How US immigration rules strip privacy and free expression - Ivo Vegter

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