US to Deny Visas to Foreign Officials Who Try to Censor US Social Media Platforms

The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has said that not only will the Secretary of State deny visas to officials of foreign states who’ve censored American social media platforms, but to their “immediate family members” as well! Public has more.

Since taking office, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has taken a series of actions to push back against growing foreign government demands to censor American citizens and American technology companies like Google, Meta, and X.

In April, Rubio shut down the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which had funded censorship advocacy by the Global Disinformation Index, a UK-based NGO with ties to the Intelligence Community. Last week, Rubio said the administration was considering sanctions under the Magnitsky Act against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes for his sweeping censorship edicts.

And on Monday, senior State Department officials traveled to France to raise their concerns about the lawfare against presidential front-runner, Marine Le Pen, and to Ireland to raise their concerns with the “Digital Services Act,” (DSA), the law that allows the EU to censor American citizens and American companies.

Now, the State Department has put in place a policy to deny visas to foreign nationals who are and were involved in the censorship of American citizens, companies, and foreigners in the United States, as well as to their immediate family members, under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

While a State Department official emphasized that this action only applies to a “target class” of visa applicants, and would not suggest any specific application of it, the new rules would allow it to deny a visa to Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Moraes, top DSA officials, their families, and hundreds if not thousands of other foreign officials worldwide.

Other media have reported that Rubio tapped Acting Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Darren Beattie, to play a key role in free speech diplomacy, which has included shutting down GEC, creating an internal transparency initiative, and developing the new sanctions.

“Obviously, we don’t love the idea of the Europeans censoring their own citizens,” Beattie told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, “but the principal concern is these spillover effects affecting content-moderation policies and a variety of free-speech concerns within the United States. And there’s various mechanisms within the DSA that are concerning in that regard.”

Through the DSA the European Union is trying to set standards for how Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, X and others censor content. The U.S. “is committed to shutting down the global censorship-industrial complex,” a State Department communication seen by the Journal said.

Worth reading in full.