US State Dept seeks tougher visa scrutiny, including social media checks

Questions about social media accounts would be part of the stepped-up criteria, which would apply to 65,000 people per year, or about 0.5 percent of US visa applicants worldwide, the State Department estimated. It did not target nationals of any country. 

A set of new questions would apply to visa applicants who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities, the State Department said in a notice to the Federal Register. 

Those applicants would be required to provide all prior passport numbers, five years’ worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers, as well as 15 years of biographical information, when applying for a US visa. Consular officers would not request user passwords for social media accounts, the document said. 

If granted, the new criteria would mark the first concrete step toward stringent vetting that Trump asked federal agencies to apply toward travellers from countries he deemed a threat in an executive order issued in January and revised in March. 

While parts of the travel order, including a temporary ban on the entry of nationals from several majority-Muslim countries, were halted by federal courts, the review of vetting procedures detailed in an accompanying memorandum remains in place. 

“Collecting additional information from visa applicants whose circumstances suggest a need for further scrutiny will strengthen our process for vetting these applicants and confirming their identity,” a State Department official said. The State Department’s proposal also says that applicants may be asked to provide additional travel dates if a consular officer determines they have been in an area which was ‘under the operational control of a terrorist organisation’.