Social Media Screening for US Visas

[Randy W]

in the NY Times

 

14 Million Visitors to U.S. Face Social Media Screening

 

 

Nearly all applicants for a visa to enter the United States — an estimated 14.7 million people a year — will be asked to submit their social media user names for the past five years, under proposed rules that the State Department issued on Friday.

Last September, the Trump administration announced that applicants for immigrant visas would be asked for social media data, a plan that would affect 710,000 people or so a year. The new proposal would vastly expand that order to cover some 14 million people each year who apply for nonimmigrant visas.

The proposal covers 20 social media platforms. Most of them are based in the United States: Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Myspace, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Vine and YouTube. But several are based overseas: the Chinese sites Douban, QQ, Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo and Youku; the Russian social network VK; Twoo, which was created in Belgium; and Ask.fm, a question-and-answer platform based in Latvia.

 

 

[Allon]

Right. Let's see how that interview would go: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, and no. I don't use social media at all.

 

And I am not a communist and never been part of the communist party.

 

I should buy some stock in those small little VPN companies......

[Greg.D.]

Most of our terrorists are native born and don't have any dealing with immigration. Then, others come here with no prior leanings that would be discernible via online history - at least at the time of their entry. I think this derives those two fookers from San Bernadino who should have been snagged - wait, actually the male was US-born but his imported Pakistani wife had expressed her jihad tendencies prior to coming and might have been screened out.

 

Must be a more efficient way.

[Allon]

"On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty...."

 

Oops wrong oath. But maybe not....

 

I do not see how this would be enforceable. The agent will just have to lie, as some of them do anyway.

 

This "problem" if it is "problem" at all can be ameliorated by dealing with the perception that America's streets are lined with gold. Bring more economic opportunity to countries like Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico. And work on the perception of the American people that the bad guy is from the south and has brown skin. There is your wall.