An internal State Department memo instructs consular officers to reject H-1B visa applications from people whose work in fact-checking, content moderation or related trust-and-safety roles the administration characterizes as “censorship.” The guidance, circulated Tuesday and first reported by Reuters and NPR, focuses on H-1B applicants — a visa class often used by workers in the tech sector.
The memo directs officials to look for evidence that an applicant was “responsible for, or complicit in” efforts to suppress protected expression in the United States and to find such applicants ineligible. It cites a May policy by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that bars visas for foreign officials or others deemed complicit in censoring Americans. Consular officers are told to scrutinize resumes, LinkedIn profiles and media coverage and to probe roles that included fighting misinformation, fact-checking, content moderation, compliance, or trust-and-safety work.
Administration officials have long criticized platform content policies and trust-and-safety operations, pointing to decisions such as the removal or suspension of former President Trump’s accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as examples of tech companies silencing Americans. That argument has fueled efforts to constrain perceived bias in moderation even as some firms have relaxed rules amid political pressures.
Critics of the memo say it blurs the line between lawful content enforcement and censorship and could undermine essential safety work. Alice Goguen Hunsberger, who has led trust-and-safety teams at companies including OpenAI and Grindr, said she was alarmed that efforts to protect users — from stopping child sexual abuse material to preventing fraud and sextortion — are being equated with censorship. She warned that excluding international experts could reduce protections for Americans online.
First Amendment specialists also condemned the directive. Carrie DeCell of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute argued that professionals who study misinformation and manage moderation are doing work protected by free-speech principles, calling the policy incoherent and constitutionally suspect.
A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on “allegedly leaked documents,” but defended the policy as protecting Americans’ freedom of expression against foreigners who would censor them. The statement said the administration does not support allowing people to come to the U.S. to “work as censors muzzling Americans,” and referenced the president’s past experience with account restrictions as part of the rationale.
The memo arrives as the administration has tightened broader screening of visa applicants’ online presence. The State Department on Wednesday announced it will require H-1B applicants and their dependents to set social media profiles to public so officials can review them. The new visa guidance and social-media checks have raised concerns among technology and civil liberties observers about overbroad definitions of censorship and the potential chilling effects on legitimate content-safety work.
Reporting contributions to this story came from NPR reporters.