Sponsor
Nicole Malliotakis
Representative · R-NY
Representative · R-NY
The bill strengthens tools to identify and remove nonimmigrant visa holders who engage in antisemitic violence or support it, improving safety and national-security responses, but does so in ways that could curtail speech, disrupt international education and exchanges, and concentrate discretionary, politically sensitive authority in visa decisions.
Students and other nonimmigrant F/M visa holders who engage in violent or harassing antisemitic acts can have visas revoked, reducing immediate threats to Jewish communities and improving campus safety.
The bill gives the State Department a clear IHRA-based definition and examples of antisemitism, enabling more consistent identification and adjudication of antisemitic conduct in visa decisions.
Visa revocation authority explicitly tied to providing material support for antisemitic violence can disrupt funding channels and networks that enable attacks, strengthening national-security responses to extremist violence.
F and M visa holders (international students and exchange visitors) could lose visas based on broadly phrased IHRA examples or conduct definitions, risking penalties for political expression, protests, or controversial speech and raising due-process concerns.
Increased visa denials or revocations could reduce international student enrollment and exchange participation, disrupting education, research collaborations, and campus budgets and imposing economic costs on universities.
Tying automatic revocation authority to the Secretary's foreign-policy judgment grants wide discretion that could politicize visa decisions and lead to uneven or unpredictable application across cases.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Adds visa‑ineligibility and revocation grounds for F‑1 and M‑1 nonimmigrant students who engage in defined antisemitic violent or harassing conduct or knowingly provide material support for such acts.
Official title: To direct the Secretary of State to revoke the visas of students who have engaged in antisemitic activities, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 10, 2025 by Nicole Malliotakis · Last progress April 10, 2025
Revokes or denies F‑1 and M‑1 student visas for noncitizens who engage in specified antisemitic conduct after the law takes effect. The bill adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism (including its contemporary examples) and makes violent, harassing, vandalizing acts against Jewish persons, property, institutions, or religious facilities, and knowingly providing material support for such acts, grounds for visa denial or revocation when the Secretary of State determines the conduct would or does pose potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences to the United States. The law applies to nonimmigrant student visa categories (F and M), requires revocation when the Secretary makes the required determination, and ties the substantive definitions and standards to existing immigration law criteria for ‘‘potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”