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US To Seek Social Media Details From All Visa Applicants (bloomberg.com)
According to Bloomberg, the State Department wants to require all U.S. visa applicants to submit their social media usernames, previous email addresses and phone numbers. From the report: In documents to be published in Friday's Federal Register, the department said it wants the public to comment on the proposed new requirements, which will affect nearly 15 million foreigners who apply for visas to enter the U.S. each year. The new rules would apply to virtually all applicants for immigrant and non-immigrant visas. The department estimates it would affect 710,000 immigrant visa applicants and 14 million non-immigrant visa applicants, including those who want to come to the U.S. for business or education, according to the documents. If the requirements are approved by the Office of Management and Budget, applications for all visa types would list a number of social media platforms and require the applicant to provide any account names they may have had on them over the previous five years. It would also give the applicant the option to volunteer information about social media accounts on platforms not listed in the application. In addition to their social media histories, visa applicants will be asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, international travel and deportation status, as well as whether any family members have been involved in terrorist activities. Only applicants for certain diplomatic and official visa types may be exempted from the requirements, the documents said.
It's not security-anything. The purpose is to humiliate all applicants. You don't need to follow up on them.
You can occasionally randomly follow up on what some people didn't include, look for them on whatever website they say they're not on, find them if they lied poorly, and then reject their application. That seems like a pretty great way to make people unhappier, though I'm not saying it's the only viable way to approach it so they shouldn't specify this in the new regs.
Why do you think you take your shoes off at TSA checkpoints? It's to make you acknowledge that you're their bitch, that's why. They don't just want to humiliate you, and you unflinchingly take it; you have to participate in it. I think this social media thing is a reasonable extension of this.
The big question is: why is this limited to Visa applicants? Shouldn't they be doing this to citizens too? Maybe the Visa aspect is just a trial run.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
...I always have, and I always will.
But I don't have to like their government, and most of the Americans I know, don't like them very much either, but it's theirs - and right now, all they got, they got to deal with it.
Sadly, because of the draconian laws and orwellian rules bestowed on travelers and tourists to the U.S. I won't be spending my tourist money there either, and that's sad - because I spend a lot. Just the last vacation, I spent roughly 4000$ in just one month, Four thousand dollars may not sound like a lot, but it's still money to some, the year before that I spent nearly 6000$ there.
I still WANT to go, because I love to meet my American friends in person, and they have roots in our countries too (as you may know, most of America consists of immigrants), and a lot of them stem from Scandinavia. But I'm a stickler for freedom - and I believe strongly in my rights, and no way - no how - will anyone force me to give up my entire history, no matter what excuse they hide under.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
For countries that participate in the visa-waiver programme, such as the UK, just an I-94 is required to be filled in before landing.
At least, that was the case the last time I travelled there. If this new nonsense gets enacted, then that will have been the last time...
Of course, this will serve no useful purpose - anyone trying to get in with malicious intent will have prepared an innocuous set of social media content, but anyone sensible who eschews FB and their ilk will get pulled out of line for some special questioning...
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As an American, that sucks. Forget the hate on this site. You WILL be missed, as will the millions of others who choose not visit this country now that more and more barriers are put in place.
Don't worry, there are plenty of other countries where they can spend their money.
Being able to travel all over the world w/o substantial scrutiny or barriers is a relatively modern event, and was perhaps simply a temporary anomaly resulting from a brief period where long distance travel was easier than getting detailed information about travelers across borders.
In any case, this isn't a USA specific issue.
As an American with conservative political beliefs, I would not feel safe traveling to the UK or Europe. The UK just imprisoned a US Traveler for 3 days just because they didn't like his/her political beliefs. Europe is worse, who knows what laws I might break by speaking my mind?
No country is perfect, and now that countries are engaged in the modern fad of encouraging only politically correct speech - all of them are taking advantage of the influx of information about travelers.
You can look up the stats if you want to get a nice quantitative measurement of risk. You're somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten times safer from violent death if you visit wester Europe instead of the US. The incarceration rate in the US is around 5 to 10 times higher than most western European countries (or other notable destinations such as Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan or China). I couldn't find stats on the relative rate of incarceration of foreigners.