Non-resident aliens abroad aren't generally considered to be protected by the First Amendment, so denying someone a visa before they enter the US based on speech may be Constitutionally ok.
Deporting people already in the US because of speech is a different matter.
> so denying someone a visa before they enter the US based on speech may be Constitutionally ok.
| Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The Supreme Court hasn't said much, but in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez plurality opinion by Rehnquist held that the rights of "the people" protected by the Fourth Amendment (written similarly) does not extend outside the United States to aliens abroad as they are not a "class of persons who are part of a national community or ... have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community."
> it refers to "the people of the United States" which would not include aliens abroad.
These are different:
- The people
- The people of the United States
- Citizens
If you are confused about this you can 1) Google to confirm, 2) read the constitution, not just the amendments, to see this actively play out, or 3) read the Federalist Papers, where it is stated more explicitly.
James Madison provides the rationale:
"Aliens are not more parties to the laws, than they are parties to the Constitution; yet it will not be disputed, that as they owe, on one hand, a temporary obedience, they are entitled, in return, to their protection and advantage."
While aliens within the United States owe temporary obedience to its laws and thus enjoy protections under the Constitution, aliens abroad do not.
Again, see United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez where the Supreme Court determined aliens abroad were found illegible for Fourth Amendment protection as they were not considered "the people."
This is how normalization of deviance works on a bureaucratic administrative legal scale. One administration, with just a mildly lackadaisical attitude about staying within the bounds of things like rights, laws, legality and so forth, stretches what's legally allowed or normal just a bit, here and there, only to be followed by another more or less reasonable administration that does it a bit more. Then however, you might get a less common but not extremely rare administration that simply doesn't give a tin shit about anything resembling legality insofar as it thinks it can get away with it, and all those previous deviations are aggressively pried into and expanded as much as possible.
This is why it's important to fight deviations of respect for individual legal rights and constitutional boundaries even when they're small, committed by administrations you otherwise largely respect. You simply don't know who will come along later, or how much political tendencies will change over time having been already given ever more free rein to do so illegally.
Then on the other hand, there is also that large subset of the population that, as long as a particular administration shares its ideological fixations, simply doesn't care about legality or deviations from constitutional responsibility.
On the contrary, they'll actively bark for their new leaders to break the rules as much as possible against anything they don't like. They're idiots for doing this of course, because it can very easily bite them right back in the ass later, but try explaining that when rational discourse goes down the drain in favor of dogmas.
Not that that exactly matters to this administration, who is happy to act first and let the courts figure it out never