People I've spoken to seem more comfortable acting like this is part of the current administration's agenda, rather than an encroaching trend which has been gradually getting worse year upon year. For example this specific policy was added as an "optional" (not really) question on an entry form before the 2016 presidential elections (I know, I wrote a letter protesting it during public comment period).
My point is: Both Democrats and Republics have been complicit in allowing these kind of activities to continue. And the American public would sooner blame the other "side" in this political dog and pony show, than take responsibility for this being what America's fear based society has brought.
As an aside: These questions are almost impossible for some of us to answer completely. I own entire domains of email addresses and make them up on the fly, I've also thrown away dozens of "social media" accounts in the last five years for trivial reasons.
But the incomplete answers will be very useful when they want to arbitrarily withdraw someone's visa, in the same way that medical insurance used to have intentionally complex registration forms which they could comb through to look for ways to kick people off after they got sick. So people that hold a visa better not protest, write to their representatives, or otherwise stick out or they'll just yank the visa and say bye bye.
I'll write in again during this public comment period. But frankly public comment periods just seem like a way to placate the masses, both you and they know this is coming, nothing a public comment could say will change that.
These questions are almost impossible for some of us to answer completely. I own entire domains of email addresses and make them up on the fly, I've also thrown away dozens of "social media" accounts in the last five years for trivial reasons.
That's why this initiative in nonsensical. They'll never know whether the answers to these questions are complete and accurate. I'm pretty sure that later tonight, a new paragraph will go into the ISIS handbook saying "create a Facebook account in your real name that you can give to the authorities, that has nothing on it except for pro-American content". That would actually be good advice for all prospective travelers to the US. Lock down your real profile before your trip so that it can't be searched for, and maintain a separate, public, very vanilla profile that you can give to them. That's all it would take for most people to go through with no issues.
Under the previous administration, there was a special policy for Iranian students made so that their visa date interview collide with the beginning of their semester and they would be under-enrolled at the critical date and lose their visa immediately. Some universities had to create special programs with different dates for those students. (now they are outright banned from applying for a visa)
> These questions are almost impossible for some of us to answer completely.
This is true for me also. And the result is that I'm now not going to risk a holiday in the US. I've never been and I'd love to go but the entry requirements are just too onerous.
(I'm from the UK by the way and I don't suspect anything in my past or social profile would cause a problem but the system is too capricious for me to want to engage with)
It's interesting to note that the only other countries on my "too much hassle for a holiday" list (other than outright warzones and similar) is the UAE and it's neighbours because of their terrifyingly arbitrary legal system and the risk of being innocently targeted)
EDIT - it's not entirely clear whether this affects tourist visas but my concerns extend beyond this particular measure and any visit is likely to be a mixed purpose trip in any case.
One nice thing about having a President with 50%+ disapproval [1] is all the things that got swept under the rug, previously, can now be made alarming. This might be an unintended way the system clears detritus and scope creep.
My point is: Both Democrats and Republics have been complicit
In fact, you bringing it up is causing more distraction and confusion regarding the original issue. Quite literally playing into the systems entire purpose..
The USA is a joke when it comes to security. They've got all this stupid and expensive beauracracy for coming in and out of the country that does nothing but irritate people.
I recently flew through the US on a connection flight from the UK and needed to give details of my employment history and my birth place amongst other things. In Tampa I got interrogated for looking nervous, which I was because we had landed late and I had very little time to catch my connection. My phone was searched, my WhatsApp messages were read, and they asked me all sorts of personal questions such as my girlfriend's birthday and the names of her cats.
After all this nonsense and their military-checkpoint style TSA procedures, I was able to continue on my journey (after the almost 20 hour delay).
So if they ask for social media profiles and phone numbers it's just a minor addition to the existing useless questions. If I wanted to hide something I could easily lie and they'd have absolutely no way of checking. Quite honestly I hope I never have to go anywhere near the US border ever again, I would rather pay an extra £200 for an alternative flight.
Under what conditions would any of these events actually occur? The government isn't going to waste resources to deport someone solely for forgetting an account; they would only go to such effort if there's another reason that they actually care about to deport that person.
When the United States does something like this others start doing it too, sometimes seemingly just to reciprocate or spite. The US contributes so much to the world with respect to tech, business, culture and science but it’s also an exporter of increasing bureaucracy.
Happens already with visa fees. I believe one of the reasons Americans need to purchase Indian visas in advance is because Indians must do so to enter America.
I agree, this is very obviously a policy area where the US should be leading (or at least not setting new negative standards).
It's curious though, as the popular thing to claim today is that China is obviously the future. They're going to supposedly dominate everything, from AI to robotics to insert-tech-thing-here.
Article after article proclaimed that China would take advantage of Trump's immigration policies to do a massive global talent grab.
So what happened to that fraudulent premise? There are almost zero human rights in China. The few they had acquired, have increasingly been stripped back away.
So this social media grab is a massive problem for the US. Having zero rights in China means they're going to acquire all the world's talent and dominate the universe. Something certainly doesn't make sense in the storyline.
One thing to know is that apparently the reason for having seemingly idiotic questions on immigration forms ("are you a terrorist?", "are you a nazi war criminal?") is not that the government is stupid but rather that they're there in order to be able to deport someone for answering the question incorrectly in the event that the government wants to deport them but lacks sufficient evidence to pursue a criminal case. There's a blanket "you answer wrong, we deport you" law somewhere on the books.
Pretty absurd that they're asking for all of this and:
> [...] In addition to their social media histories, visa applicants will be asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, international travel and deportation status, as well as whether any family members have been involved in terrorist activities.
I know a number of people going through, or have been through, the US visa process and surely if this is required, applicants are going to drop.
Furthermore, if you submit that you don't have a social media account are they going to assume you're a liar? Are applicants just going to create new "real" accounts just to avoid looking suspicious?
> five years of previously used telephone numbers,
I couldn't tell even if I wanted to, I go somewhere, pick up a SIM card, trash it when I leave. These days many countries sell them from machines or newsstands at the airport, this is not unusual any more.
A more hidden effect of this is the chilling effect of this on what would-be immigrants post on social media. E.g. should I remove a photo from the Women's March because it was seen by some as a protest against the current administration?
I'm not sure I'm planning to visit the US ever again, but if I did, what would count as social media? Does HN count? Does my blog? IRC nickname? Github and Bitbucket accounts? I've never had a Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest or LinkedIn account.
The only thing I guess unequivocally counts as social media is my Mastodon accounts.
So "Nobody forced you to give Facebook all that data" will no longer be true. If you don't have your data on Facebook, and it doesn't match your government records, you'll be marked as Suspicious by the secret police.
Ugh. First, fake profiles are not only possible, they are trivial. So if you correctly state you don’t have a profile on X, and they find one anyway...do you think they’ll bother to tell you why you were denied? No, you’ll just be silently blacklisted for what “you” do online.
Social networks are also run by companies, not the government. They need to just stop expecting us to interact with a tiny number of specific companies (it’s “big 3” credit reporting all over again, only somehow worse).
And finally, can we stop treating potential immigrants so poorly!?!? There are enough rules, forms, fees and delays already; how many more things do they really need?
I'm curious of what the lobbying arms of major social media companies like Facebook and Twitter think of this. Are they using their considerable resources to try and push back against this? They can't possibly benefit from this deeper reach of the government's spying eyes.
Ugh. I'm at the tail end of doing immigration visas for my wife and daughter, and it's taken a year to get here. The process is already somewhat stressful as it is. Adding bullshit like social media to the already long list of things you have to report makes my blood boil. Glad we'll be done before this ever gets approved.
To anyone who has been calling for regulation of social media, here you go. This is what the actual result will gradually look like for everyone: you can ask the government to "protect" you from social media, but it is in the interest of government to work with social media platforms to do anything but protect your privacy. Don't think that your country is immune from the trend. The islands of potential protection from this grow smaller by the day, as pressure mounts, both internally and externally.
Remember that major governments have been, and undoubtedly continue to spy on all of us, either openly or covertly. You can #deletefacebook all you want - you won't be able to opt out of your own government's spying efforts.
The social media companies are US companies. Why are they hurting their own companies. Why would I want to have a social media account if every country wants to look at what I consider my personal life. Having accounts won't be worth it. Fuck that.
I already work at a large university that can't use anything hosted on US servers because of their shitty homeland security server laws. So many cloud services out of huge campus wide contracts.
I delete all my apps and texts when I go through borders as well.
I will offer the outsider's perspective. I didn't know which form it was going to take, but I expected this for quite a while. What is really happening here is a brilliant kind of targeting of the most tech savvy folks (most likely to be prolific on social media) - you know, that pesky immigrant group who not only easily make more than the median income of the natives, but the ones who are most likely to be law abiding (and against whom the usual slander such as "rapists" will not stick). This is the group which most infuriates the native underclass in all societies when the society starts facing economic turmoil.
To all immigrants who went to the US on such a visa (e.g. H1) - take this as a distant warning and make a plan B to leave the US. This story does not have a good ending and it has happened too often in history. There may be a lot of native folks wringing their hands and even offering their support (which is welcome of course) but the underclass is generally too economically ignorant to ever listen to them.
How to retaliate against someone you dislike while they are applying to travel/study in the US? Launch a smear campaign against him/her on social media. Super effective.
While Canada is excluded (so far) I'm just not comfortable going down to the US anymore and supporting this nonsense in any way. I wonder if it'll ever get bad enough where this information must be provided before an overflight.
Immigration aside, I would be curious to see if this type of stance has any impact on tourism stats. I assumed once travel bans started being introduced that conference organizers would adopt stronger preferences for other countries as potential locations but I'm not sure if that's actually happened.
I've heard the local technical university is seeing about third of the international students having visa delays. This was from a talk by a engineering dept head on March 26.
It's not just immigrants. I'm a citizen and am flying back from a two week trip to Japan today. One of the things that really stands out every time I make this trip is how pleasant, friendly, and helpful the Japanese customs and immigration agents are compared to the un-wiped ass wrinkles that are their American counterparts. I honestly think it is possible to assess those entering the U.S. without being a complete asshole during the process.
[+] [-] Someone1234|8 years ago|reply
My point is: Both Democrats and Republics have been complicit in allowing these kind of activities to continue. And the American public would sooner blame the other "side" in this political dog and pony show, than take responsibility for this being what America's fear based society has brought.
As an aside: These questions are almost impossible for some of us to answer completely. I own entire domains of email addresses and make them up on the fly, I've also thrown away dozens of "social media" accounts in the last five years for trivial reasons.
But the incomplete answers will be very useful when they want to arbitrarily withdraw someone's visa, in the same way that medical insurance used to have intentionally complex registration forms which they could comb through to look for ways to kick people off after they got sick. So people that hold a visa better not protest, write to their representatives, or otherwise stick out or they'll just yank the visa and say bye bye.
I'll write in again during this public comment period. But frankly public comment periods just seem like a way to placate the masses, both you and they know this is coming, nothing a public comment could say will change that.
[+] [-] downandout|8 years ago|reply
That's why this initiative in nonsensical. They'll never know whether the answers to these questions are complete and accurate. I'm pretty sure that later tonight, a new paragraph will go into the ISIS handbook saying "create a Facebook account in your real name that you can give to the authorities, that has nothing on it except for pro-American content". That would actually be good advice for all prospective travelers to the US. Lock down your real profile before your trip so that it can't be searched for, and maintain a separate, public, very vanilla profile that you can give to them. That's all it would take for most people to go through with no issues.
[+] [-] nraynaud|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andybak|8 years ago|reply
This is true for me also. And the result is that I'm now not going to risk a holiday in the US. I've never been and I'd love to go but the entry requirements are just too onerous.
(I'm from the UK by the way and I don't suspect anything in my past or social profile would cause a problem but the system is too capricious for me to want to engage with)
It's interesting to note that the only other countries on my "too much hassle for a holiday" list (other than outright warzones and similar) is the UAE and it's neighbours because of their terrifyingly arbitrary legal system and the risk of being innocently targeted)
EDIT - it's not entirely clear whether this affects tourist visas but my concerns extend beyond this particular measure and any visit is likely to be a mixed purpose trip in any case.
[+] [-] justicezyx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bambax|8 years ago|reply
That said, the world is a big place. Let's hope not every other country does the same.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/...
[+] [-] forapurpose|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bsder|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] golergka|8 years ago|reply
Also, I was under impression that any visa can be revoked at will, why would they need special trick questions for it?
[+] [-] staplers|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alephu5|8 years ago|reply
I recently flew through the US on a connection flight from the UK and needed to give details of my employment history and my birth place amongst other things. In Tampa I got interrogated for looking nervous, which I was because we had landed late and I had very little time to catch my connection. My phone was searched, my WhatsApp messages were read, and they asked me all sorts of personal questions such as my girlfriend's birthday and the names of her cats.
After all this nonsense and their military-checkpoint style TSA procedures, I was able to continue on my journey (after the almost 20 hour delay).
So if they ask for social media profiles and phone numbers it's just a minor addition to the existing useless questions. If I wanted to hide something I could easily lie and they'd have absolutely no way of checking. Quite honestly I hope I never have to go anywhere near the US border ever again, I would rather pay an extra £200 for an alternative flight.
[+] [-] cerebellum|8 years ago|reply
You forget to list that LiveJournal, Advogato or Quora accounts: family gets deported.*
Your daughter forgets to list that Pinterest account: family gets deported.*
Your son forgets to list that last.fm or SoundCloud account: family gets deported.*
Your mom forgets her Academia.edu account and Mittens forgets her vampirefreaks account: family gets deported.*
[*] or separated...
[+] [-] _acme|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saiya-jin|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ajeet_dhaliwal|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bambax|8 years ago|reply
I wouldn't call it bureaucracy, but I don't know of a proper, better name. Hysteria maybe. Not sure.
[+] [-] bsimpson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] __jal|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
It's curious though, as the popular thing to claim today is that China is obviously the future. They're going to supposedly dominate everything, from AI to robotics to insert-tech-thing-here.
Article after article proclaimed that China would take advantage of Trump's immigration policies to do a massive global talent grab.
So what happened to that fraudulent premise? There are almost zero human rights in China. The few they had acquired, have increasingly been stripped back away.
So this social media grab is a massive problem for the US. Having zero rights in China means they're going to acquire all the world's talent and dominate the universe. Something certainly doesn't make sense in the storyline.
[+] [-] dboreham|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ineedtosleep|8 years ago|reply
> [...] In addition to their social media histories, visa applicants will be asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, international travel and deportation status, as well as whether any family members have been involved in terrorist activities.
I know a number of people going through, or have been through, the US visa process and surely if this is required, applicants are going to drop.
Furthermore, if you submit that you don't have a social media account are they going to assume you're a liar? Are applicants just going to create new "real" accounts just to avoid looking suspicious?
[+] [-] chx|8 years ago|reply
I couldn't tell even if I wanted to, I go somewhere, pick up a SIM card, trash it when I leave. These days many countries sell them from machines or newsstands at the airport, this is not unusual any more.
Japan and the UK, both from 2015: https://cdn.techinasia.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Screen... http://travelpal.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploa... and actually even the USA, this is JFK: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CX0y79EWQAAGlfZ.jpg
[+] [-] paulgb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordigh|8 years ago|reply
The only thing I guess unequivocally counts as social media is my Mastodon accounts.
[+] [-] gph|8 years ago|reply
Seems like a dumb policy to require details on a purely voluntary activity.
[+] [-] cbr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r00fus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] confounded|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] TAForObvReasons|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fipple|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makecheck|8 years ago|reply
Social networks are also run by companies, not the government. They need to just stop expecting us to interact with a tiny number of specific companies (it’s “big 3” credit reporting all over again, only somehow worse).
And finally, can we stop treating potential immigrants so poorly!?!? There are enough rules, forms, fees and delays already; how many more things do they really need?
[+] [-] colinbartlett|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bojo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noarchy|8 years ago|reply
Remember that major governments have been, and undoubtedly continue to spy on all of us, either openly or covertly. You can #deletefacebook all you want - you won't be able to opt out of your own government's spying efforts.
[+] [-] nacho2sweet|8 years ago|reply
I already work at a large university that can't use anything hosted on US servers because of their shitty homeland security server laws. So many cloud services out of huge campus wide contracts.
I delete all my apps and texts when I go through borders as well.
[+] [-] onthe_otherhand|8 years ago|reply
To all immigrants who went to the US on such a visa (e.g. H1) - take this as a distant warning and make a plan B to leave the US. This story does not have a good ending and it has happened too often in history. There may be a lot of native folks wringing their hands and even offering their support (which is welcome of course) but the underclass is generally too economically ignorant to ever listen to them.
[+] [-] stuffedBelly|8 years ago|reply
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