The US Department of State has proposed tougher questioning of applicants believed to deserve extra scrutiny who are looking to get hold of US visas. This was revealed in a document published on Thursday, in what is being seen as a step toward President Donald Trump’s ‘extreme vetting’.
Part of the extra criteria would include questions about social media accounts. This could apply to as many as 65,000 people per annum, around 0.5 percent of applicants for US visas from all over the world, estimates from the State Department show. These new proposals would not target foreign nationals from specific countries. A notice sent to the Federal Register, by the State Department, suggested that a new series of questions would apply to applicants for US visas warranting further scrutiny about US visa ineligibilities that related to national security.
Such applicants would need to hand over the numbers for all their previous passports, 15-years-worth of biographical data, and five years’ worth of email addresses, phone numbers, and social media handles in their application. The document states that user passwords for social media accounts would not be requested.
If accepted, these new criteria would be the first move toward the more stringent vetting that federal agencies were asked to use for visitors from certain countries by President Donald Trump, via executive orders in January and March. Federal courts have since halted some aspects of those orders.