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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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...