What to know about claims US will deny citizenship to people who don't support Israel
Source: Snopes
What to know about claims US will deny citizenship to people who don't support Israel
U.S. officials announced they will surveil social media of people applying to immigrate for "antisemitic activity."
Grace Deng
Published April 11, 2025
On April 9, 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will now consider "antisemitic activity" on social media as grounds for denying immigration benefits to applicants seeking to study or reside in the United States.
As the news spread, some people online claimed the announcement meant government officials would deny citizenship to applicants who do not support Israel. Others alleged the U.S. government was "making support for Israel and Judaism a requirement for US citizenship" or that the citizenship agency would "deny immigration benefits to anyone whose social media expresses a verboten opinion on Palestine."
It was not yet clear whether DHS' announcement — available on the agency's website — means people may be denied U.S. citizenship on the basis of their criticism of Israel, although U.S. immigration officials already have targeted pro-Palestinian demonstrators for removal from the country. While the announcement does not explicitly apply to those seeking citizenship, it does pertain to people seeking "lawful permanent residence status," which is often a required step before applying for citizenship.
In an emailed statement, DHS said its definition of "antisemitic activity" will align with President Donald Trump's executive orders on antisemitism; an order of his from 2019, during his first term, affirmed the United States' 2016 adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's "working definition" of antisemitism, which states that antisemitism includes the "targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity," but that not all criticisms of Israel are antisemitic.
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Read more: https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/04/11/us-citizenship-israel-antisemitism/
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The article should be read in its entirety, not just the excerpt, as it notes a difference between what paragraph 4 says and what DHS is actually doing. The devil is in the interpretation of yet to be clarified DHS guidelines.
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