State Dept. Says Any Foreigner Seeking To Visit Harvard Must Be Vetted For ‘Hostile Attitudes Towards US Culture’

Here are your options as a foreigner, whether you live in the US already or are just seeking a chance to enter the country: support Israel’s actions against Palestine or GTFO.

The Trump Administration continues to pretend supporting Palestine is the same thing as being racist against Israel. And it’s using this false dichotomy to further punish a university it’s already punishing and to allow government staffers performing entrance visa vetting to pretend any opposition to Trump is just as bad as being antisemitic on main.

The executive orders aimed at enforcing only Trump’s approved view on the Israel-Palestine conflict pretend they have something to do with “national security.” The vanishing of migrants and legal residents who are opposed to Israel’s actions is just more of the same thing. And the DHS’s recent targeting of Harvard shows Trump and his enablers will only amp up the bullying if their intended victims refuse to immediately acquiesce.

A cable sent by State Department figurehead Marco Rubio to consulates all over the world instructs them to amp up their vetting process for visa applicants, specifically in order to prevent people with anti-Israel (or anti-MAGA) views from being allowed to enter the country for the purpose of heading to Harvard. The cable only targets applicants heading to Harvard and covers everyone from prospective students to instructors to contractors.

Marisa Kabas posted some screenshots on Bluesky before covering the full cable at The Handbasket. There’s more to Rubio’s instructions than can be seen in Kabas’ social media post, so definitely head to the source to get all the details.

The opening of the cable might lead people to believe this vetting is only targeting a few outliers on the migrate-to-Harvard spectrum:

“Effective immediately, consular officers must refer certain student and exchange visitor (F, M, and J) visa applicants to the Fraud Prevention Unit (FPU) for a mandatory social media check as described below,” the cable reads. It then references a quote from Rubio on March 16th: “We don’t want people in our country that are going to be committing crimes and undermining our national security or the public safety. It’s that simple. Especially people that are here as guests. That is what a visa is… It is a visitor into our country. And if you violate the terms of your visitation, you are going to leave.”

But it’s actually a lot worse than that. It tells those doing the vetting to instruct applicants to set all social media accounts to Public and assume that anyone utilizing private accounts or refusing to do so when instructed must be hiding something.

As in all instances in which an applicant refuses to provide certain information upon request, consular officers should consider whether 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.

I know the wording sounds like it’s telling them to use their judgment, but considering this memo specifically targets only applicants seeking to visit Harvard, the most common assumption will be in favor of blocking their application.

And this is just the warning shot. Harvard is the target du jour. There will be more targets in the future and consulate officers should probably just starting vetting every applicant for anti-Israel (or anti-Trump) sentiment.

Implementation of this vetting measure for applicants traveling to Harvard will also serve as a pilot for expanded screening and vetting of visa applicants, and as the Department continues to develop and expand any enhanced vetting requirements to student visas generally, it may announce similar measures for other groups of visa applicants…

Speaking of expanded implementation, here’s the part that goes past the supposed national security concerns of rooting out antisemitic visa applicants:

[I]n another section, it states that a student visa applicant doesn’t necessarily need to express explicit support for “terrorist activity” in order to be denied, but just that they demonstrate “a degree of public approval or public advocacy for terrorist activity or a terrorist organization.” 

It goes on to say: “This may be evident in conduct that bears a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture (including government, institutions, or founding principles). Or it may be evident in advocacy or sympathy for foreign terrorist organizations. All of these matters may open lines of inquiry regarding the applicant’s credibility and purpose of travel.”

The Trump Administration is doing everything it can to homogenize the nation with its mass deportation program. This addition to visa vetting procedures makes it clear it’s only willing to extend this privilege to people who appear to like Trump and this administration or, at the very least, have never posted anything remotely controversial ever. And that’s why white South Africans are getting the red carpet rolled out for them while everyone sporting browner shades of skin are getting hustled into planes bound for whatever country has expressed an interest in jailing non-citizens indefinitely.