Mind what you post on social media, make sure they are things you can be proud of and be able to defend if need be.
Travellers
to the United States will soon have to submit their social media
identities, previous telephone numbers and email addresses.
According to a State Department plan published on Friday, visa seekers —
whether visitors or would-be immigrants — will be presented with a list
of social media platforms.
Applicants will be required to identify which they use and provide
“any identifiers used by applicants for those platforms during the five
years preceding the date of application.
Other questions seek
five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, and
international travel,” the notice, published in the Federal Register,
revealed.
When these new rules were first suggested last year
as part of what US President Donald Trump has called “extreme vetting”
of would-be visitors, civil liberties groups sounded the alarm about
privacy.
But officials say they could identify potential
extremists, such as one of the attackers in the December 2015 San
Bernadino shooting — who got a visa despite allegedly advocating “jihad”
on social media.
The measures apply both to the DS-260
“Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration Form” and the DS-160 “Application
for Nonimmigrant Visa.” In the last fiscal year, 559,536 people applied
for US immigrant visas and 9,681,913 for various forms of visitor visa.
Friday’s announced measures will not touch diplomatic or
official travelers. The announcement begins a 60-day period in which
interested bodies and members of the public will be allowed to submit
comments on the rule changes, which are expected to be approved on May
29.
Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social media platforms used across the world today.
