The Trump administration announced on Wednesday a major shift in the vetting process for H-1B visas, which are used to bring highly skilled foreign workers into the United States. According to an internal State Department memo, applicants—and their accompanying family members—could face rejection if they are found to have participated in “censorship” of free speech.
H-1B visas are a key tool for U.S. tech companies that heavily recruit talent from countries like India and China. Many of these firms’ executives were notable supporters of Trump in the previous presidential election.
The directive, issued on December 2 and sent to all U.S. diplomatic missions, instructs consular officers to carefully review applicants’ professional histories, including resumes and LinkedIn profiles. Officials are asked to look for involvement in areas such as content moderation, fact-checking, misinformation management, online compliance, and digital safety.
The memo specifies that if an applicant is found to have been “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States,” they should be considered ineligible under a specific article of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
This enhanced vetting represents an unprecedented focus on free speech and censorship in evaluating H-1B applicants, and these details had not been publicly reported prior to the memo. It signals a more stringent approach to ensuring that foreign workers entering the U.S. tech sector have not participated in activities that could undermine protected expression.
