On Dec. 3, Reuters reported that in an internal State Department memo, sent the previous day to all U.S. missions, the Trump administration ordered consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants – and family members traveling with them – to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.
“If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible,” under a specific article of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the cable said.
Reuters said H-1B visas, which allow U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty fields, are crucial for U.S. tech companies which recruit heavily from countries including India and China.
The International Fact-Checking Network, to which VERA Files is a signatory, issued the following statement expressing concern about the memo that wrongly conflates journalism with censorship.
New visa directives wrongly conflate journalism with censorship
The International Fact-Checking Network is deeply concerned by reports that the U.S. State Department has instructed consular officers to deny visas to individuals who have worked in fact-checking, content moderation, and trust and safety.
Fact-checking is journalism. It is the straightforward work of comparing public claims against the best available evidence and publishing the results for all to see. This work strengthens public debate — it does not censor it. It is protected within the United States by the First Amendment, and the U.S. has long supported similar press freedoms internationally. To conflate this work with censorship is to misunderstand what fact-checkers do, or to deliberately misrepresent it.
The IFCN’s global network includes more than 170 organizations in over 80 countries, all of them committed to nonpartisanship, transparency of sources, and corrections when errors occur. These are the same standards that have defined high-quality journalism for generations. Our signatories do not remove content from the internet. They add information to the public record.
We are also troubled by the broader implications for trust and safety professionals whose work protects children from exploitation, prevents fraud and scams, and combats coordinated harassment. These functions make the internet safer for everyone, including Americans. Content moderation by tech companies and journalistic fact-checking both are exercises of freedom of expression.
A free press and an informed public are foundational to democracy. Policies that treat the pursuit of accuracy as a disqualifying activity send a chilling message to journalists and others worldwide.
About the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter was launched in 2015 to bring together the growing community of fact-checkers around the world and advocates of factual information in the global fight against misinformation.
We enable fact-checkers through networking, capacity building and collaboration. The IFCN promotes the excellence of fact-checking to the verified signatories to the IFCN Code of Principles — more than 170 organizations from 80 countries — through advocacy, training and global events.
Our team monitors trends in the fact-checking field to offer resources to fact-checkers, contribute to public discourse and provide support for new projects and initiatives that advance accountability in journalism.
