Given the savagely disproportionate fine just imposed by the EU on X/Twitter (more on that to come), this step, if accurately reported, is a welcome beginning, but it should only be a beginning.
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced increased vetting of applicants for H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, with an internal State Department memo saying that anyone involved in “censorship” of free speech be considered for rejection.
The cable, sent to all U.S. missions on December 2, orders U.S. consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants – and family members who would be traveling with them — to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.
“If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible,” under a specific article of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the cable said.
But this is only for H-1Bs. The question is whether this approach should be extended to include broader U.S. travel bans for censorship activists such as former E.U. Commissioner Thierry Breton or the nest of censors silencing away in Ofcom, a key part of Britain’s speech-control apparatus.
It is a question that should take two seconds to answer. Spoiler: The answer is yes.
All that said, sovereign democracies lacking the protections of the U.S.’s First Amendment (a shield for free expression that looks more critical by the day) should have the legal right to police speech within their own territories. That so many of their governments are choosing to do so in an increasingly oppressive fashion is appalling, but if their voters want freer speech, they can vote those governments out (exceptions or exclusions apply within the E.U., an essentially post-democratic institution).
It thus seems obvious that the game plan by the E.U., the U.K., and others is to force U.S. social media companies to wall off large areas of American free speech from their residents’ eyes, and it will probably succeed (consumers in these jurisdictions, among others, should buy VPNs while they still can). That this will involve the looting (or attempted looting) of some American high-tech companies along the way is merely a bonus.
There is, however, no reason why the U.S. should make the job (or the lives) of the censors any easier.