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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?
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.
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.
Really? Because in the last five years I must have created or posted content (as described) on, I would guess, more than three hundred websites. Of those I probably remember ... 10? 15? at most. I certainly don't remember all the "unique usernames" I've used. Do you know every place you've posted a Disqus comment? Where your facebook comments ended up? What if you don't have a facecrap account - but someone with your name does? You think they're going to be able to tell the difference? Or even care they're wrong?
All prior passport numbers? I don't know. How do I find the number on a passport that expired 20 years ago and which was inadvertently destroyed ten years ago?
I don't remember every single address I've lived at (sure, the ones I own, or I was on a lease, or lived at as a child - generally fine). Time periods? No chance. Nearest YEAR at best. If I were a frequent traveller, that info would be just as foggy. Did I travel to Bali in March or May? NFI. And the list goes on.
Why should the other 99.999% be effectively forced to lie (either directly or by omission) because some bureaucrat somewhere in the US has a hardon for trawling through personal data yet with arguably ZERO chance of unearthing anything useful. Do you really think that a terrywrist ISN'T GOING TO LIE?!
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.
...tourist industry. At least the hotel chains won't no longer have to worry about Booking.com and Tripadvisor.com.
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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