The U.S. State Department has issued an internal cable instructing consular officers to place extra scrutiny on H-1B visa applicants whose résumés or social-media profiles show any involvement in what officials call “content moderation, fact-checking or other censorship of Americans.” Officers are directed to comb through publicly available information—including LinkedIn, GitHub commits and conference presentations—for signs that the applicant’s work helps remove or demote user content. If so, the officer may treat the job as against “core U.S. free-speech values” and deny the visa under the public--interest clause of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The guidance, distributed late on 6 December, follows President Trump’s second-term pledge to punish companies and workers who “censor conservative voices.” It arrives on the heels of a steep new US$100,000 supplemental fee for employers whose H-1B registrations are selected in the annual lottery, multiplying the financial risk of sponsoring foreign talent.
![U.S. targets ‘online censorship’ jobs in new H-1B visa screening rules]()
Immigration lawyers say the order gives consular staff enormous discretion. Unlike past national-security checks that focused on export-controlled technologies, the new test requires officers to make subjective judgments about a worker’s day-to-day duties and the political impact of those duties. “It’s a recipe for unpredictable refusals and months-long administrative processing,” warns Ted Chiappari, head of Duane Morris’s immigration group. Companies may now hesitate to assign global employees to trust-and-safety or policy teams, or may relocate those teams abroad to avoid U.S. visa risk.
For the tech sector, the timing is painful. Holiday travel often coincides with H-1B renewals at consulates, and those traveling home could be trapped overseas by new document requests. HR advisers advise H-1B holders in policy-adjacent roles to postpone non-urgent trips, prepare detailed job descriptions that emphasise software engineering functions and scrub résumés of ambiguous “policy” language.
Longer term, the order could chill the U.S. talent pipeline for emerging areas such as AI safety or election-integrity research. Recruiters already report that candidates from India, Canada and the EU are exploring remote work or transfers to hubs such as Toronto and Dublin rather than risk visa delays in 2026.
The guidance, distributed late on 6 December, follows President Trump’s second-term pledge to punish companies and workers who “censor conservative voices.” It arrives on the heels of a steep new US$100,000 supplemental fee for employers whose H-1B registrations are selected in the annual lottery, multiplying the financial risk of sponsoring foreign talent.
Immigration lawyers say the order gives consular staff enormous discretion. Unlike past national-security checks that focused on export-controlled technologies, the new test requires officers to make subjective judgments about a worker’s day-to-day duties and the political impact of those duties. “It’s a recipe for unpredictable refusals and months-long administrative processing,” warns Ted Chiappari, head of Duane Morris’s immigration group. Companies may now hesitate to assign global employees to trust-and-safety or policy teams, or may relocate those teams abroad to avoid U.S. visa risk.
For the tech sector, the timing is painful. Holiday travel often coincides with H-1B renewals at consulates, and those traveling home could be trapped overseas by new document requests. HR advisers advise H-1B holders in policy-adjacent roles to postpone non-urgent trips, prepare detailed job descriptions that emphasise software engineering functions and scrub résumés of ambiguous “policy” language.
Longer term, the order could chill the U.S. talent pipeline for emerging areas such as AI safety or election-integrity research. Recruiters already report that candidates from India, Canada and the EU are exploring remote work or transfers to hubs such as Toronto and Dublin rather than risk visa delays in 2026.
