Starting July 15, the U.S. Department of State is imposing visa restrictions on certain employees of Chinese technology companies that “provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights abuses globally”, according to the Department’s website.
The main ground for visa restrictions is Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. According to this document, a foreigner is inadmissible to the U.S. if there is a reason to believe their entry “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.
Companies impacted by these visa restrictions include Huawei, a Chinese multinational technology company that provides telecommunications equipment. The U.S. Department of State believes that this company “censors political dissidents and enables mass internment camps in Xinjiang” and that its employees “provide material support to the CCP [Communist Party of China] regime that commits human rights abuses”.
It is not specified which employees, which type of employee, or how many of them the restrictions are targeting. However, it is expected that family members of the targeted employees would face the same restrictions, according to State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus.
In an interview with The Hill on July 15, the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added that the U.S. is looking at limits on other Chinese tech companies as well.
“Whether it’s TikTok or any of the other Chinese communications platforms, apps, infrastructure, this administration has taken seriously the requirement to protect the American people from having their information end up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.
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