Effective Immediately For Non-Immigrant Visa Applicants: Make all social media accounts public, says new US rule

Washington: The United States of America has announced that all individuals applying for an F, M, or J non-immigrant visa are required to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media (SM) accounts to 'public'.

Effective immediately, this move is carried out in order to facilitate the vetting process, to establish the applicants' identity and admissibility to the nation under law.

“Every visa adjudication is a national security decision. Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J non-immigrant visa are requested to adjust the privacy settings on all of their personal social media accounts to 'public' to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States,” said the US Embassy in India (@USAndIndia) in an X post on Monday. In the second slide of the same post, the US embassy said that the country has been requiring all visa applicants to provide social media identifiers on immigrant and non-immigrant visa application forms.

The post further added that the embassy uses the available information in its visa screening and vetting procedures to identify those who pose a threat to the national security and hence stand inadmissible to the country.