U.S. Department of State / Flickr
Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a new visa restriction policy Wednesday aimed at foreign officials and individuals complicit in censoring Americans — a bold move to protect free speech.
“Even as we take action to reject censorship at home, we see troubling instances of foreign governments and foreign officials picking up the slack,” Rubio said in a statement. “In some instances, foreign officials have taken flagrant censorship actions against U.S. tech companies and U.S. citizens and residents when they have no authority to do so.”
According to Rubio’s statement, the policy authorizes visa bans on foreign nationals who censor protected speech in the US, including officials who issue or threaten arrest warrants over social media posts, and those who pressure American tech companies to adopt global censorship policies beyond their jurisdiction.
“It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on U.S. citizens or U.S. residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on U.S. soil,” Rubio emphasized. “We will not tolerate encroachments upon American sovereignty, especially when such encroachments undermine the exercise of our fundamental right to free speech.”
The announcement comes amid mounting global concerns over censorship laws.
Just last week, the European Parliament held hearings to discuss the dangers of the European Union’s 2022 censorship law, which forces online platforms to remove illegal content. Ahead of the meeting, the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor raised alarms about the law’s effect on free speech.
“Examples of this conduct are troublingly numerous,” the Bureau warned in an X post. “EU Commissioner Thierry Breton threatened X for hosting political speech; Türkiye fined Meta for refusing to restrict content about protests; and Australia required X to remove a post criticizing an individual for promoting gender ideology.”
In a separate instance, Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered a ban on X for its refusal to censor so-called “fake news” and “hate speech” last September. The decision triggered global outrage, with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International calling on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to intervene.
As CatholicVote previously reported, “ADF’s letter pointed out other recent examples of censorship in Brazil, including the targeting of pro-life voices who opposed now-President Lula da Silva’s pro-abortion campaign during the 2022 presidential election.”
In a Wednesday post, Rubio reiterated the policy’s core message: “For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights.”
“Free speech is essential to the American way of life – a birthright over which foreign governments have no authority,” he added.
CatholicVote praised Rubio’s announcement, calling it “[r]espect for our God-given right to free speech.”
