And still it's the "free-speech" USA that deports students for protesting against Israel war in Gaza and not UK.
There's the wording of the law, and then there's the practice of the government. Most communist regimes in Eastern Europe had pretty nice constitutions. It's just that everybody knew it doesn't matter what the constitution says - you complain = you're off to the national variety of a KGB prison.
When your government ignores courts and laws and just deport people as it sees fit for their protesting or their tatoos - you do not have free speech. No matter what your laws say.
BTW - USA arguably didn't have free speech for majority of its existence. If you were a slave you certainly didn't.
If that were true (which it isn't), when you don't get due process, they can just claim you aren't a citizen, and then—just as they have—'deport' (read: exile) you and claim there is no way to get you back when the "mistake" is found.
How can someone be so confident but also so wrong?
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EDIT: Let's remind ourselves of where FEDERAL freedom of speech comes from. Firstly, of course, is the First Amendment:
> 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.
You may notice that it doesn't say "free speech is for citizens", but rather that there is a negative-right against Congress from legislating to restrict speech. But what about the President, or the judiciary, or the States? Well, Gitlow v. New York established the following:
> Assumed, for the purposes of the case, that freedom of speech and of the press are among the personal rights and liberties protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States.
Judges need to get better at this: it NEVER is just for that case. And so the case set a precedent that the 14th Amendment's due process clause contains within itself a more powerful version of the First Amendment. Now let's remind ourselves of what the due process clause says (with the equal protect clause for good measure):
> nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Now, to quote the notorious RBG:
> Nor shall any State deprive any person, not any citizen. And the choice [in] the word 'person' was quite deliberate. And similarly, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. So, the United States constitution surely recognises the fundamental human rights of all persons.
Now, reasonable people can disagree on whether the due process clause should be so expansive, indeed I find the US's tendency to amend the Constitution via Supreme Court precedent to be deeply troubling, but even under a textualist reading of the First Amendment, the idea that Freedom of Speech in America is limited to citizens is deeply, deeply ignorant.
There's the wording of the law, and then there's the practice of the government. Most communist regimes in Eastern Europe had pretty nice constitutions. It's just that everybody knew it doesn't matter what the constitution says - you complain = you're off to the national variety of a KGB prison.
When your government ignores courts and laws and just deport people as it sees fit for their protesting or their tatoos - you do not have free speech. No matter what your laws say.
BTW - USA arguably didn't have free speech for majority of its existence. If you were a slave you certainly didn't.