America Embassy in India has introduced that candidates for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas ought to make their social media accounts public.
The brand new guideline seeks to assist officers confirm the identification and eligibility of candidates beneath U.S. regulation. The U.S. Embassy mentioned each visa software evaluate is a “nationwide safety determination.”
“Efficient instantly, all people making use of for an F, M, or J nonimmigrant visa are requested to regulate the privateness settings on all of their private social media accounts to ‘public’ to facilitate vetting needed to determine their identification and admissibility to the US,” the embassy mentioned in a put up on X.
Below the brand new guidelines, Indian college students and others planning to pursue academia or enroll in vocational or trade packages are mandated to make sure that their social media profiles are set to public earlier than submitting their visa functions. A refusal to set the accounts to “public” could possibly be grounds for rejection.
The embassy famous that the US has required visa candidates to offer social media identifiers on immigrant and nonimmigrant visa software kinds since 2019.
It additionally mentioned each piece of “accessible” info is used as a part of its visa screening and vetting to determine visa candidates who’re deemed inadmissible to the nation, together with those that pose a risk to its nationwide safety. Nevertheless, it didn’t spell out what these steps would search for.
Comparable directives have been issued by different U.S. embassies internationally, with the U.S. Embassy in Mexico stating that visa candidates should record all social media usernames or handles of each platform they’ve used from the final 5 years.
The event comes weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration ordered embassies world wide to cease scheduling appointments for scholar visas to develop social media vetting of such candidates. Final week, the U.S. Division of State mentioned it is resuming the method, however with new measures that require candidates to unlock their social media accounts for presidency evaluate.
“America have to be vigilant in the course of the visa issuance course of to make sure that these making use of for admission into the US don’t intend to hurt Individuals and our nationwide pursuits, and that each one candidates credibly set up their eligibility for the visa sought, together with that they intend to interact in actions in line with the phrases for his or her admission,” the division mentioned.
