DHS Is Helping TikTok Import Countless Foreign Workers
By Jon Feere on November 16, 2022
U.S. government officials and national security experts have raised a number of concerns about the viral video application TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance, Inc. Of primary concern is the application’s extensive data harvesting that is reported to be accessible by the Chinese government. The Federal Communications Commission calls TikTok “a sophisticated surveillance tool” that “poses an unacceptable national security risk”, while the U.S. military has banned personnel from using it. Concerns about the cell phone application have been raised by members of Congress across the political spectrum. The question of how TikTok user data is handled, and who has access to that data, is one that has not been fully explored, particularly in the context of U.S. immigration programs.
Publicly available information and additional data obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies confirm that U.S.-based employees of ByteDance include foreign nationals who have obtained employment through the H-1B and Optional Practical Training (OPT) foreign worker programs, both of which are overseen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
ByteDance executives say TikTok stores all U.S. user data in Virginia and Singapore and that the TikTok organization in the United States is independent from China. The claim of independence is difficult to square with the fact that citizens of China are working for the company inside the United States. These foreign workers maintain their Chinese citizenship and are to return back to the homeland when their visas expire. According to an analysis by Forbes, as of August 2022, a total of 300 employees of TikTok and ByteDance, including company directors and managers, have worked for Chinese government-controlled news media including Xinhua and China Radio International; the analysis found that some of these employees continue to work with the Chinese government media.
https://cis.org/Feere/DHS-Helping-TikTok-Import-Countless-Foreign-Workers
