Social media has become an integral part of our lives, whether you agree or not. Your social media profile can help ascertain the kind of person that you are, and that is exactly what the US thought when it made it mandatory for your social media information to be provided when you apply for a US visa.
The State Department had announced in 2018 that it was planning on including the requirement for all US visa applicants, immigrant and non-immigrant, of providing their social media handles to the US government. The documents filed to Federal Register would ask every individual that wanted to apply for a US visa to provide social media handles for certain platforms during the last five years.
This will also include email addresses along with telephone numbers that you have been using during the said time. This new requirement, however, is only limited to certain social media services. Applicants can, if they wish to, provide details on their social media profiles that are not included on the list.
This was required only for those who had been to the terrorist-controlled areas. So why has this been implemented all across the spectrum of applicants? The basic idea seems to be the identification of any potential extremist who might be a follower of radical or extreme ideologies posing a threat to the US. Nonetheless, this new move will be affecting millions of applicants that apply for the US visa every year.
Claiming not to have any social media accounts will not protect you since the State Department has threatened with severe immigration consequences if the wrong information is fed. What do you think of this new social media policy for the US visa application? Is it too much or is it the need of the times that we are living in? Do let us know!