No FB, Insta, X account? You may be denied US visa under Trump regime

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reportedly ordered stricter social media scrutiny for foreign visa applicants. Those without a public online profile may now be denied entry

Don't have a social media account? You may be ineligible for a visa to the US. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has directed consular officers to examine the social media profiles of all foreigners hoping to visit Harvard University, Bloomberg reported on May 23. The cable, sent to embassies worldwide, suggests that the absence of an online presence could be enough reason to refuse a visa.

 

Rubio said the new rules would act as a pilot for future security checks, just days after interviews for student visas were paused to find ways of blocking those considered security risks.

 

Who’s affected?

 

The order applies to:

 

Prospective students and current students

Faculty, employees and contractors

Guest speakers and tourists

 

The Trump administration had previously tried to prevent Harvard from admitting foreign students, but the courts blocked that move.

 

What’s in the cable?

 

The document directs consular officers to:

 

< Search applicants’ social media profiles

< Instruct applicants to make social media accounts public

< Treat an absence of online posts as suspicious

 

“Consular officers should consider whether the lack of any online presence, or having social media accounts restricted to ‘private’ or with limited visibility, may be reflective of evasiveness,” said Rubio.

 

The US State Department declined to comment on this. During a press briefing on May 27, spokesperson Tammy Bruce said, “If you’re discussing that, that’s something that has not been discussed publicly. It would have to be leaked material if it exists.”

 

Bruce also said, “We use every tool in our tool chest to vet anyone coming in who wants to come into this country… every sovereign country has a right to know who is trying to come in, why they want to come in, who they are, what they’ve been doing, and at least hopefully within that framework determine what they will be doing while they’re here… we will continue to use every tool we can to assess who it is that’s coming here, whether they are students or otherwise.”

 

'Breach of people's rights'

 

Lawyers and free-speech advocates have raised concerns that Rubio’s instructions could breach people’s rights.

 

“It seems a little bit like a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation,” said Greg Lukiano, president and chief executive of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which works to protect free speech on college campuses.

 

He wrote in an article for the Atlantic on May 31 that the Trump administration’s actions were “egregious and unconstitutional.” Lukiano added, “I hadn’t actually thought about the idea that if you post on social media and you say things the government doesn’t like, you can be in trouble — but also if you conspicuously don’t or try to keep them private you can also be in trouble.”

 

Bloomberg quoted Sofia Cope, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, saying, “Penalising a would-be foreign student or visitor for not being active on social media or keeping their online presence shielded from the general public is an outrageous overreach by the administration.”

 

Akshay Chaturvedi, founder and CEO of Leverage Edu, said the order is not about restricting international students.

 

“This is NOT about international students, their opportunities, their dreams etc; this decision stems from a very specific objective, re anti-semitism that the current US Govt is targeting, which ‘happened to have’ some of the action play out on campuses, hence… things aren’t as bad as they look for international students,” he shared on X.

 

“There continues to be incredible respect for immigrants in the US, from entry-counters to its parks to its public spaces, everywhere… these are cycles, US as a destination for international students will never be out of vogue.”

 

International students made up 5.9% of the nearly 19 million US higher education population in the 2023-2024 academic year. Over 1.1 million foreign students were in the US, with India sending the most, followed by China.  With inputs from Bloomberg