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Trump Administration Approves Tougher Visa Vetting, Including Social Media Checks (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tightening-bolts dept.

The Trump administration has rolled out a new questionnaire for U.S. visa applicants worldwide that asks for social media handles for the last five years and biographical information going back 15 years. From a report: The new questions, part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, was approved on May 23 by the Office of Management and Budget despite criticism from a range of education officials and academic groups during a public comment period. Critics argued that the new questions would be overly burdensome, lead to long delays in processing and discourage international students and scientists from coming to the United States. Under the new procedures, consular officials can request all prior passport numbers, five years' worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.

1 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Easily Thwarted by sit1963nz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    JFK has over 30 million passengers through each year.

    That means 82,191 passengers need vetting each day.
    Assuming they each take one hour (e.g. each person can do 8 per day) and you have 3 8 hour shifts, you would need 3,424 people just to handle the traffic at JFK.

    And we dont even account for holidays,sick days, etc, etc. Then there will be the supervisors, computer support, Managers, payroll, etc etc etc so lets take that to 4,000 people.

    Now, Where is the money to pay them coming from ?

    Make them pay you say, OK fine, that will mean competing airports in Canada and Mexico will see a rise in passenger numbers because costs are lower and thats on top of all those people who are choosing to avoid the USA anyway now. This will see thousands of people jobless in the Tourism industry, tens of BILLIONS in lost overseas revenue.

    How do I know this, because I am one of a growing number who are choosing to avoid the US.

    So go ahead break your country. There is absolutely no law that says the US can not become a failure.