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The Trump administration has rolled out a new questionnaire for U.S. visa applicants worldwide that asks for social media handles for the last five years and biographical information going back 15 years.
The new questions, part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, was approved on May 23 by the Office of Management and Budget despite criticism from a range of education officials and academic groups during a public comment period.
Critics argued that the new questions would be overly burdensome, lead to long delays in processing and discourage international students and scientists from coming to the United States.
Under the new procedures, consular officials can request all prior passport numbers, five years' worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.
Officials will request the additional information when they determine "that such information is required to confirm identity or conduct more rigorous national security vetting," a State Department official said on Wednesday.
The State Department said earlier the tighter vetting would apply to visa applicants "who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Saturday June 03 2017, @08:27PM (3 children)
And the answer is:
Because it's security theatre that doesn't aid in stopping terrorists at all, but at ENORMOUS administrative costs. And because visa-applicants are - the VAST, VAST, VAST majority - just ordinary people. You're burdening them and yourselves for virtually zero gain. You mention 9/11 - how many of those attackers required visas?
Really, asking for Facebook and emails? Gosh. I guess I could just... say I don't use them. Or point you at a fake profile. Or literally make it up. Or give you someone else's. It doesn't provide you ACCESS to those profiles, after all. And I'm more likely to have, say, a Chinese social media account that you'll never get access to if I was Chinese. So what have you gained? What are you going to do, go through my Facebook and SoylentNews posts for the last five years and see if I'm condescending to Trump? What's that going to tell you?
The problem you have is that you think there's something special about the US here. There isn't. Every first-world country has the same problems, and sometimes because our ally (e.g. the US) invaded countries, bombed hospitals and supplanted the local government, not ourselves.
Visa applicants range from people fleeing terrorism, to people training to be doctors, to businessmen trying to find a US trade partner, to invited speakers from the world's scientific community. You just accused them all of being terrorists. Guess how likely they are to come to the US to do those things, even though they are ZERO threat to you?
The statistics in your paragraph are, additionally, absolute bollocks.
You are literally putting people off of even vacationing in the US with this kind of attitude, let alone attracting talent to do the things that your country doesn't have enough of (the reason you allow immigration in the first place is to fulfill workplace skills gaps that you can't yourself).
P.S. You come across as inherently racist, as you're lumping "immigrant" and "terrorist", even if it's done subconsciously. 99.999% of all immigrants are not terrorists.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 03 2017, @11:08PM (1 child)
Terrorist is a race now. Good grief. Maybe you didn't shoot yourself in the foot with that last, but you scared hell out of ratiional people when you shot a hole in the floor next to your foot.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday June 04 2017, @12:35AM
The funniest thing in the GP post is that he thinks the US government does not have access to social media accounts unless you tell them the password.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @01:13AM
If they be asking for your social network profile, you can be damn certain that everything in there, regardless of whether it is marked private or not, is available to the USG. Or in other words: that's a nice little fantasy you got going there, but if you repeat it long enough, you will believe it, won't you?