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Trump Administration Approves Tougher Visa Vetting, Including Social Media Checks (reuters.com)
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.
Like they did their ethics waviers:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/336038-white-house-may-have-broke-ethics-rule-with-retroactive-waiver-report
So now the proper functioning of my company is jeopardized?
Thank god these nefarious terrorists have social media profiles under their real names, and have no clue about meta-data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne7DnmdilEg
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Having been to the US a number of times we as a family have made the choice not to go there again, its simply not worth the aggravation.
We can fly to Europe via Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and other transit stops, there is no need to go via the US or even near the US. International flights may end up shifting to Canada/Mexico to attract customers.
This of course also means flying on non-US airlines.
It means we spend our money else where. We, outside the USA, get to vote with our wallets, and we are.
Become isolationist, build your walls, hell even shoot yourself in the other foot, we are no longer worried, the real harm is to the US, not us.
this won't impact the new People's Democratic Republic of California, will it?
yes an by making that travel overly complex with excessively onerous requirements it has economic knockon effects to tourism, business and diplomatic relations. For a president supposedly focused on jobs this is a very anti jobs approach.
Precisely! Discouraging travel is how you sabotage trade and the productivity of a country. Trump is your worst enemy as an American - every day he does more to damage the standing of the USA and empower other nations to fill that gap.
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.
"request all prior passport numbers"
That is great for people who have laundered their past by getting some new state to become their only "travel" document after a few years of entry and telling a good story.
A new passport granted by some easy third party nation will not be able to cover for past issues on another travel document.
"five years' worth of social media handles"
That will allow for a deeper understanding of a persons politics, who they fund, support, like and who their friends are.
Lots of images in a nation few people can get into? Why is that person in that nation over the years?
Posing under a banned groups banner, flag? A photo with a banned group?
No bringing a banned groups supporters into the USA.
"biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history"
That shows a person has a job, can support themselves while they are in the USA, what study they did. What they present is a real not a fictional story to get travel paperwork from their own nation or created to be given new paperwork from a third nation.
Lie to the USA and no visa application. Why should a person of interest be able to lie, omit, hide support for groups of interest or friends who support groups of interest to the USA?
Real people with any education, a normal work history and a normal life should have no issues with any of the questions.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
simple question should be sufficient: are you a terrorist?
Trump has already imposed travel restrictions that have been estimated to cost more than $7B annually in lost tourism spending. These new restrictions will add to that.
More than 14 million American work in the tourism industry. That is about 200 times more than the number of coal miners.
Worse, what impact do you think it will have on business travel?
It's even worse if other countries start imposing reciprocal restrictions on travelers from the USA. What do you think will happen to global businesses that need to be able to send people around the world, if/when it becomes a nightmare to travel to and from the U.S.? All of a sudden it starts to become a lot more attractive to move your headquarters and any international operations to Europe or Asia, and reduce the U.S. to a subsidiary that handles only domestic business.
That means 82,191 passengers need vetting each day. Assuming they each take one hour
It doesn't take any longer than it does now. If they have a valid visa, then you let them in. If they don't, you send them back, just like now. All the vetting has already been done during visa application.
The past passport numbers would fill in most of a normal persons past world travel.
Having an interesting person on file in another nation when they should have been in their own nation or moving around some other nation would show:
Dual citizen with a passport they did not mention. Thats a lie.
Another travel document they did not mention.
Sharing or the use of fake documents.
People made mistakes in the 1960-90's thinking no database would ever reconnect be created and show their past support or movements to interesting nations.
That the only passport they had to consider is the one they use now.
Most normal nations have taken a lot of time and effort on every document they allowed in and out of their nation over the decades.
Every passport number, every face, all the details stayed on file. Now the databases are linked for all other nations, past decades and not just people who are wanted or passports that have been revoked.
All details are now shared, not just who is wanted or who has no passport.
No spelling errors, no issues with fonts, languages, translation. Every name can be fully considered rather than just trying to match a few names of interest.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
In USSR privacy protects you?
...tourist industry. At least the hotel chains won't no longer have to worry about Booking.com and Tripadvisor.com.
As someone who have been traveling to the states 3 times a year on vacation, I think it is time to say goodbye for now.
I was already somewhat reluctant about our upcoming trip this fall because of the laptop/electronics ban as carry-on, which got cancelled but now there's talks about it again. I am not putting expensive laptops and camera gear in checked.
The house has already been rented, but it will be cancelled tonight.
It's a shame, I liked to book the premium seats at Norwegian which enabled me to sleep or at least relax all the 10 hours on the flight, then one night after landing in Las Vegas and then driving to Arizona to go mountain biking, although the roads these days seems to have been deteriorating too much to be driving a Corvette, Mustang or Camaro. I liked renting american cars so that was a part of the "package".
It was good fun, but I guess I will just spend my money within Europe.
When I visit other countries, including the US, I often buy a SIM card, get a temporary phone number, now some orange dingbat in the US tells me I was supposed to have remembered all those phone numbers I've had over the past 5 years.
Oh, and I design VOIP hardware and software .... do you want ALL those numbers too? I can't remember them, is it a big form? lots of room
Don't you guys have an NSA or something to keep track of all this stuff for us
That's not how visas work. You can still get sent back despite having a perfectly valid visa.
What do you think will happen to global businesses that need to be able to send people around the world.
Less air travel = less climate change. Trump is simply attempting to reverse the effects of withdrawing from the Paris Accord.
The form estimates it will take 60 minutes to fill in. Only a very parochial American, like Trump, could find out all their travel, passport, and social media details within 60 minutes.
Anyone who travels for work, or lives in a smaller country near other countries, or likes personal travel, will take 60 minutes to find their travel history for the past year, or less. It would take days of work to collect 15 years of details.
I estimate that most of my work colleagues would find it impossible to collect travel details for 15 years, or social media handles for 15 years. They might not even remember where they lived 15 years ago.
This is an impossible task to complete precisely for most people. It is also impossible for the US government to verify that the person has submitted all the information asked for. Therefore it is both unreasonable for the applicant and wasteful for the US government.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
"Have you travelled to any country (otherthan your country of residence) in the last 15 years? Ifyes, provide details for each trip, including locations visited, date visited, source of funds, and length of stay."
:)
:)
:) 15 years worth of employment history? :) Really :) Nice. I'd like to see a 30-40 years old senior tech worker fill out such an application :)
Now, I do realize there are lots of people on this planet that do not travel much, some never even leave their country. My question is, realistically speaking, who in the US govt. thinks many of such people will apply for a US visa? Since even when talking about regular people, 15 years is a long time during which very very many travels can be done. And then there are some people, who the US probably wants - or should want - like scientists, researchers, engineers, etc. some or most of which might travel dozens (or even more) times PER YEAR. Now, just for a moment think about gathering information for 100+ travels for a visa application... Geez, I mean: GEEZ!
"Have you ever held a passport other than the passport listed in your visa application? If yes, provide the following information"
Well, I don't know how many passports people usually have during their life. Up to now, I have had a total of 3, from 2 separate countries (they do expire you know). Personally, I don't know the details of one from those three (I don't have it anymore, not even a copy) and it would be practically impossible to find out that data. Thankfully I don't need a US visa - well, not yet... this administration can seemingly have some fun with regulations
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I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Most 'Obama' regulations, like net neutrality, conservation measures, 'obamacare', etc.were intended to have net positive impacts on the economy in the long run. And most of them would. Unfortunately, it's impossible to do a double-blind study on the effects of legislation and regulation on the economy, so no one will ever be convinced of the viewpoint other than their own.