How did you get that impression? From what the article says America is only getting more conscious about foreigners from China, not foreigners in general. They are quite different.

This is hardly a surprising move considering the recent realization that the Chinese government has been pushing propaganda against American values like freedom, democracy, and basic human rights, on American soil. One notable example is confucius institutes [0].

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2019/01/1...

It's hard not to get that impression with cage-camps at the borders, asking foreign travelers for all their social media details and locking out nationalities like Iranians and Chinese from certain ventures.

Yet, here you are claiming it's "all just Chinese propaganda", apparently completely unaware about the fact that a statement like that is pretty much it's very own propaganda by deflecting everything that could be wrong as a mere invention by the "enemy from outside".

But when outrageous claims are made about China [0], the vast majority of people just gobble them up like it's manifest truth itself, without even thinking about questioning the methodology or the involved parties motives.

[0] https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mapping-xinjiangs-re-educatio...

Did I claim "all just Chinese propaganda"? I was taught in mathematical induction lessons that necessary condition does not equal sufficient condition.

I don't disagree with the rest of your statements. But I think even after disregarding an open southern border, the US is still relatively open.

> not foreigners in general.

By requesting their social network identity, right. That's being conscious.

> propaganda against American values like freedom, democracy, and basic human rights, on American soil.

Well... someone skipped reading the news for the past 3 years. The best propaganda against these values comes from your very current president and administration.

> Well... someone skipped reading the news for the past 3 years

Which didn't do a good job of informing the public.

The argument is dishonest, because policies related to surveillance were implemented by all governments of the last decade. On the contrary, this lead to many, many people to say "fuck it", let us just take this madness to the next level and see what happens.

Had the current president not won, we would certainly have increased efforts in the war on terror. The US even created a complete new agency for checking travelers. That has been the strategy for both parties for quite some time, at least a decade now.

>The argument is dishonest, because policies related to surveillance were implemented by all governments of the last decade

This is technically correct but I'd like to point out it easily rounds to two decades. Most of the surveillance state stuff ramped up after 9/11 which was almost 20yr ago.

I'm not saying it didn't start long ago.

Not saying Democrats are clean either - however, in this instance, last time I checked history books, Reagan/Bush & Republicans mostly inherit the chaos they unleashed by their interventions in Middle East in the past 30 years.

Had the current president not won... who cares? He _is_ there today. And he _is_ _breaking_ the country that elected him as well as _all the alliances this country built in the past century.

The apathy is real.

If you are implying Donald Trump is my president, that is incorrect. It's dangerous to make assumptions when you are not keeping a level head.

If requesting social network identity is not being more conscious, what is it? It is not a blanket ban. For all we know, social network identity is just more information for making a more informed decision on the visa application.

Right. With this logic, in a few years, we will all travel naked and not be allowed to cross a border without an all-orifices probe.

"First they ..."

Brits overstay and work in the US without the correct paperwork all the time. They don't seem to get noticed by the police for some reason.

I know a Brit who is banned for life from America for not having a visa when he got searched on a bus. Maybe he had a fake permit or something too, I can't remember.

Maybe they're less likely to get searched/caught, but when they are it seems to be enforced. I can't find any stats supporting either position though.

China is causing problems for USA. Right or wrong, USA thinks that they are essentially educating their future battle enemy.

"Researchers" aren't exactly your typical students though. They contribute a huge amount to the IP developed within a country.

PhD students do a lot a the grunt work that more famous people get most of the credit for.

> They contribute a huge amount to the IP developed within a country.

And can willingly, or under coercion by their home government (We'll put your parents in prison, rape your mother, have you stabbed in the street), hand over every last bit of data they have access to on any project(s). Considering most decent educational institutions receive mountains of defense department money and have all sorts of government-involved research projects for all sorts of emerging technologies that have anything remotely approaching intelligence community or military applications... I can see why we'd want to crack down, purely for opsec reasons, on students coming from a country that is most likely going to overtly be our enemy sometime in the near to mid-term future.

But seriously, why would a Chinese student, born, raised and educated in China, be loyal to USA because he studied here for x years? USA and China are heading to a collision of sorts, China would not trust thousands of US born students and researchers in high positions.

This is the kind of approach to things that I tend to associate with the global non-denominational death cult.

That's an over-generalization. No country is one entity in the context of "what it thinks".

Well, someone makes that decision. Today is Trump and his advisers (if he listens to anyone :)) and Congress. No polls or votes are taken on things like banning Chinese students or not.

Frankly, I don't think we should educate anyone that goes back to a hostile country. China is rising, and that can cause a lot of problems for us, see China Sea for one. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/03/china-army-colonel-says-beij...

The genius of American policy.

Create a hostile environment for Chinese students so that they are encouraged to return home.

Then prevent them from coming at all because they may return home.

This completely ignored that the massive majority of Chinese stay in the US, and even more would stay in the US contributing disproportionately more than nearly every other grouping of people.

If it wasn't for the US driving them away, it's hard to see why any Chinese national, especially a well educated one, would ever choose to leave the US for China.

>Frankly, I don't think we should educate anyone that goes back to a hostile country. China is rising, and that can cause a lot of problems for us, see China Sea for one.

This would be an utterly disasterous policy. The only reason to enact it is if your own side is actively seeking war.

And may I note that irrespective of the overall behaviour of the two regimes, in the case of complaining about China causing problems for US interests in the China sea, the China sea is a lot nearer to China than it is to the US.

>>in the case of complaining about China causing problems for US interests in the China sea, the China sea is a lot nearer to China than it is to the US.

Trade routes over for one. Freedom of navigation is another reason. What they might go after next time is another concern. Like it or not, USA has interests and allies over there.

When you enter the country you get a stamp with your entry date.

Doesn't this get checked when you leave, at passport control?

I would think at the very least it would raise a huge red flag the next time you try to enter US...

I also doubt that any serious employer would hire someone without checking his/her paperwork, outside maybe of seasonal/server jobs.

The U.S. doesn't have traditional outbound passport control - checks are made electronically when you book a plane ticket and the airlines are given a go/no-go to issue a boarding pass.

I must have entered/exited US about a dozen times in the last few years and I always had my passport checked by someone in uniform just before Security, when leaving.

Are these people not from Immigration/Border control?

Nope, they're from the TSA. Their job is to keep the transportation system safe and secure.

This is travel document checking by a TSA agent. They don't technically require you to show a passport, but most other acceptable forms of ID are very US-specific.

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification

>When you enter the country you get a stamp with your entry date.

>Doesn't this get checked when you leave, at passport control?

Imagine that there is this huge underground market dedicated to solving this problem for you attached mysteriously to the entire US bar industry.

edit - this is honestly the only thing that makes sense. I haven't ever done so, but brits working their US holidays and massively over staying visas by years is not uncommon and I can only think of one example of someone who ended up in actual shit.

I'm not saying that something like this does not exists (and I know for certain that some people overstay their visas), but it just seems silly to me that people coming from countries with similar quality of life and opportunities as the US would risk getting caught doing something illegal, in a country that is notoriously strict on immigration matters.

Brits abroad are not commonly stereotyped for their rationality. The USA is basically viewed as a giant theme park.