Harvard International Student With a Private Instagram? You Might Not Get a Visa.

Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered U.S. consulate and embassy officials to scour the social media accounts of international students hoping to attend Harvard. The plan, according to a copy of a diplomatic cable obtained by Politico “will also serve as a pilot for expanded screening and vetting of visa applicants” and “will be expanded over time.”

While Rubio has already started an effort to analyze prospective international students’ social media habits—last week, he directed officials to shut down the processing of student visas so a social media plan could be enacted—the details of this specific plan are particularly invasive. Most troubling, if a student’s account is private, or if they don’t have one, it could cost them the ability to secure a visa.

“The lack of any online presence, or having social media accounts restricted to ‘private’ or with limited visibility, may be reflective of evasiveness and call into question the applicant’s credibility,” reads the directive.

Further, this scrutiny will apply to more than just Harvard international students. Rubio directed diplomatic officials to “conduct a complete screening of the online presence of any nonimmigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose,” meaning that foreign speakers and some employees could also see their social media postings scrutinized. “If you are not personally and completely satisfied that the applicant, during his time in the United States, will engage in activities consistent with his non-immigrant visa status, you should refuse the visa,” the directive reads, according to Reuters.

It’s hard not to interpret Rubio’s directive as a call to ideologically discriminate against prospective international students on a staggering scale. This is especially likely given that Rubio has already personally intervened to cancel international students’ visas for actions as innocuous as attending a pro-Palestine demonstration or writing an anti-Israel op-ed. And with a French Scientist denied entry to the U.S. in March over anti-Trump views, it is not at all clear that students will only be turned away for posts that indicate they could be a plausible threat to U.S. national security.

Rubio’s order is only the latest in a string of attempts to cull rates of international students along ideological lines. In March, Rubio announced that he had canceled the visas of more than 300 students for campus activism. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not become a social activist that tears up our university campuses. And if we’ve given you a visa and you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away,” Rubio said during a press conference. “We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country. But you’re not going to do it in our country.”

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