US could seek social media details for visas
WASHINGTON The United States proposes to ask some applicants for non-immigration visas for their social media platforms and identifiers, such as Twitter handles, as part of the “extreme vetting” announced earlier by the Donald Trump administration to keep out foreigners posing terrorism-related or national security threat.
Additional details that could be asked may include details about siblings and children and other details such as travel history, employment, spouse(s) and passports, going back by 15 years — against the current five.
Travel history will include both international and domestic, which in the latter instance, could be to areas of a country said to have been “under the operational control of a terrorist organization” as defined by US immigration law.
Details sought of social media identifiers could include all handles and platforms on Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook used or issued over five years as well as all email IDs over the same period.
The new rules could go into force on May 18.
The state department, in a document submitted on Thursday to the federal register — a sort of gazette inviting comments on an impending set of measures — said an estimated 65,000 applicants annually, or 0.5% of applicants worldwide, will be impacted.
They will be picked, the document said, from “immigrant and non-immigrant visa applicants who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities”.
And that determination, it added, will be based on individual circumstances and information they provide which will lead US consular officers to conclude the applicant warrants enhanced screening that takes into account the information that is proposed to be collected.
The proposed rules will implement a March 6 memorandum ensuring “the proper collection of all information necessary to rigorously evaluate all grounds of inadmissibility or deportability, or grounds for the denial of other immigration benefits”.
It will not apply to any specific country or region or parts of the world as the six Muslim-majority nations identified for a temporary travel ban. They will be enforced by consular officers around the world.
While asking for social media identifiers, consular officers will not ask for user passwords and will not “attempt to subvert any privacy controls the applicants may have implemented”.