The U.S. State Department will ask everyone who wants to apply for a visa to provide details about their social media accounts.
The department wants to ask not only for recent social media accounts but also for all those used in the past five years, as well as: phone numbers, email addresses and all international travel made by the interested parties during that period. If approved
, the bill would expand the screening regime to every applicant, from immigrants to ordinary business travelers or tourists.
The department published its decision on Friday, and the public comment process before approval will end on May 29, 2018.
The announcement explains that the State Department wants to expand the amount of information it collects by adding some questions to its online Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration (DS-260) application.
The online form will list social media platforms (presumably the most important ones) and will “require the applicant to provide any identifying information they used on those platforms during the past five days from the date of application.”
The State Department says the form “will be submitted electronically via an encrypted connection to the appropriate Department.”
It should be noted that Russian hackers had managed to infiltrate the State Department’s system in 2014 and 2016 through the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
The State Department estimates that the revised visa process will affect about 710,000 applicants trying to enter the United States.
Of course, we do not know whether the new measures will deter those who want to travel to the United States. What is certain is that the United States, with the stamp of the State Department, is endorsing a xenophobic attitude that we are used to seeing in very authoritarian regimes.
Visa for USA; social accounts, emails and phone numbers
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