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US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

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Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#51

Post by diggan »

gwd wrote: post #13

Haven't these guys heard of the "reciprocity principle"? When I went to Brazil a few years ago, the basic price for a tourist visa was like $25 and could be done online. But, if you were a US citizen, it cost $150 and you had to schedule an attend an interview in person -- because , those were the costs and burdens placed on Brazilian citizens to apply for a US visa. Does the US want other countries inspecting our ci…

> Does the US want other countries inspecting our citizens' social media posts for the last five years?

Do you really think the US government cares that much about how Americans are treated outside of the US, or even considers that when setting up these policies? Based on some quick searching and skimming, it seems like only half the population even have passports in the first place.

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#52

Post by littlestymaar »

chii wrote: post #30
gwd wrote: post #13

Haven't these guys heard of the "reciprocity principle"? When I went to Brazil a few years ago, the basic price for a tourist visa was like $25 and could be done online. But, if you were a US citizen, it cost $150 and you had to schedule an attend an interview in person -- because , those were the costs and burdens placed on Brazilian citizens to apply for a US visa. Does the US want other countries inspecting our ci…

to play the devil's advocate, if more people wanted to visit the US than the other way around, then it's not "disadvantageous" for the US to do this.

Until you realize that tourism industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and the US used to be one of the biggest tourist destination of the world (only behind France and Spain).

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#53

Post by hagbard_c »

casenmgreen wrote: post #5

It seems to me one of the methods of control in oppressive States is to have a multitude of rules, which are impractical to actually adhere to, where failure to adhere provides leverage to State - a "justification" for State to then do whatever it is it decides to do with you (such as deportation without due process).

You're describing more or less every legal system in existence for at least the last few centuries. It is often close to impossible to go through a day without breaking at least one law, usually a multitude of them. Such infractions are not acted upon until some power-that-be deems it necessary to get a handle on a person.

As to the sudden insistence on due process when it comes to deportation of illegals I do wonder why this was not an issue when the previous regime let in millions of people without any regard for the laws of the land - i.e. due process. Is it the intention to make it impossible to correct this flagrant violation of migration laws by suddenly insisting on having every single individual go though a lengthy legal process, clogging up the courts?

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#54

Post by giacomoforte »

sorokod wrote: post #31
giacomoforte wrote: post #11

Scary stuff. I don't have social media, but from time to time I would create and delete Facebook/Twitter/Instagram accounts. Never posted anything. Just used them for auth/developer/Marketplace...etc. But I don't know all the logins I used in the past... So if I fail to provide a login to an empty profile, do I get permabanned from the US?

Could you share the definition of social media the excludes HN ?

If HN counts the so does the comment section of every website that a person might ever use.

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#55

Post by msgodel »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #34
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Play the devil's advocate with me for a bit. Say you let someone in who suicide bombs himself and takes out several Americans. Then a reporter asks the DHS spokesperson how they let someone in the country that had "Death to America" posts all over their social media out in the open for everyone to see but they didn't. Nobody would forgive the government for such a grave oversight. At the airport you already let them…

If the authorities weren't already aware of the identity of the person who posted that, what's stopping somebody with terrorist intentions from simply omitting that account while applying for a visa? To me, this seems like a grave transgression of privacy with little to no actual safety benefits.

It's a little dumb to just ignore it.

People on Visas are guests, it makes sense to ask questions like this that wouldn't ask ordinary citizens. We have been way too relaxed with it and it's nice to see some changes.

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#56

Post by potato3732842 »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #34
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Play the devil's advocate with me for a bit. Say you let someone in who suicide bombs himself and takes out several Americans. Then a reporter asks the DHS spokesperson how they let someone in the country that had "Death to America" posts all over their social media out in the open for everyone to see but they didn't. Nobody would forgive the government for such a grave oversight. At the airport you already let them…

If the authorities weren't already aware of the identity of the person who posted that, what's stopping somebody with terrorist intentions from simply omitting that account while applying for a visa? To me, this seems like a grave transgression of privacy with little to no actual safety benefits.

The point isn't that they'll provide it. The point is that a bunch of useless people buried in the bureaucracy can say "well, he wasn't on our radar and his social media came back clean" and act like that constitutes doing their jobs.

It's no different than your local government that's probably happy to permit all sorts of absurd invasive development as long as some engineer puts a stamp on it but if a homeowner wants to build a retaining wall he gets told to f-off and come back with $20k of engineered plans that make the project not worth it.

It's not about the end result. It's about dodging accountability.

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#57

Post by _lvbh »

herbst wrote: post #32
_l219 wrote: post #20

> Omitting social media information could lead to “visa denial and ineligibility” for future visas, the embassy added. The state capture by big tech is getting insane. No national ID because privacy and government overreach but sure force everyone to register an account with a private entity that specifically profits by selling your personal information. I am curious if they'll reject me for not having any active mai…

In the last thread several people mentioned plans like this, even for their kids. Basically letting people creating astro surfing accounts that only benefit the social media platforms and politics again.

Now that I think about it, this policy is a really smart play. Pretty much incentivizing foreign interference and sentiment manipulation while keeping more left leaning immigrants out of the country. Give it a few years and that might be enough to give the republicans a consistent majority of national vote share.

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#58

Post by littlestymaar »

chii wrote: post #37
potato3732842 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the point is to put the squeeze on companies that have been abusing the H1B program in spirit if not by the letter by making it hard for their talent to enter the country easily and giving the executive fairly unilateral right of denial. Though I think this is an ancillary motive.

There are way better ways to squeeze abusers of the H1B program than to roundabout the VISA application like this. This seems to be exclusively targeted at anti-trump people, by punishing them for their free speech.

Not only anti-Trump people, but also anti-Netanyahu it seems.

Re: US embassy wants 'every social media username of past five years' for new visas

#60

Post by jjcob »

osa1 wrote: post #16
casenmgreen wrote: post #5

It seems to me one of the methods of control in oppressive States is to have a multitude of rules, which are impractical to actually adhere to, where failure to adhere provides leverage to State - a "justification" for State to then do whatever it is it decides to do with you (such as deportation without due process).

Exactly. Another case where this happens is with credit/point based systems for things like settlement/citizenship that effectively allows governments to discriminate freely based on vague criteria.

I think point based systems are the most fair and not arbitrary, since points are usually awarded for things like age, degree, language proficiency. That's the least discriminating way to steer immigration.
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