In a late-evening update on September 18, the U.S. Department of State quietly expanded its ‘online-presence review’ program to cover three additional non-immigrant visa classes—foreign media representatives (I), USMCA professionals (TN) and their dependents (TD). The change, first reported September 23 by the Hindustan Times, means that beginning October 1, applicants in these categories will be instructed to set every listed social-media account to a “public/open” setting for the duration of the application process. Consular officers will be able to review posts, photos and connections in the same way they already review the online activity of H-1B workers, F-1 students, J-1 exchange visitors and more than a dozen other visa classes. Unlike earlier iterations of social-media vetting—rolled out in 2019 for immigrant applicants and in 2020 for most work and student visas—the new directive does not add extra questions to the DS-160/DS-260 forms. Instead, it relies on a privacy-settings instruction that many applicants may overlook. Consular managers told industry groups that failure to make accounts public could trigger “administrative processing” delays or, in egregious cases, a refusal under INA §221(g). The Department says the policy is aimed at strengthening national-security vetting, but civil-liberties advocates argue it chills free expression and has a disproportionate impact on journalists (I visas) and Canadian or Mexican professionals entering under the USMCA (TN/TD). For global mobility managers, the immediate consequence is procedural: HR teams that routinely file blanket TN packages or media-company I visas will need to add a “social-media settings” checkpoint to their pre-submission compliance lists. Applicants accustomed to locking profiles may need guidance on how to make them viewable without compromising personal security. Companies should also review internal social-media policies; disciplinary action taken against employees for online speech could surface in consular interviews and complicate visa issuance. Looking ahead, practitioners expect the online-presence review to expand to additional categories once the Department upgrades its automated screening tools. Technology vendors are already pitching AI systems that scrape open-source data and flag ‘derogatory’ identifiers—raising questions about algorithmic transparency, data retention and false positives. Congress has shown little appetite to legislate guardrails, so, for now, the best defence for employers is education: make sure applicants understand what consular officers will see and how seemingly benign posts can be misconstrued.
Source: Hindustan Times
