The Trump administration has rolled out a new questionnaire for US visa applicants worldwide which asks applicants to provide their social media handles for the last five years and biographical information going back 15 years.
The new questions, part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, was approved on 23 May by the Office of Management and Budget despite criticism from a range of education officials and academic groups during a public comment period.
Critics argued that the new questions would be overly burdensome, lead to long delays in processing and discourage international students and scientists from coming to the United States.
Under the new procedure, consular officials can request all prior passport numbers, five years' worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.
The State Department said earlier the tighter vetting would apply to visa applicants "who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities".
Donald Trump has tried to implement a temporary travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority nations that a US appeals court refused to reinstate, calling it discriminatory and setting the stage for a showdown in the Supreme Court.
Immigration lawyers and advocates say the request for 15 years of detailed biographical information, as well as the expectation that applicants remember all their social media handles, is likely to catch applicants who make innocent mistakes or do not remember all the information requested.
Babak Yousefzadeh, a San Francisco-based attorney and president of the Iranian American Bar Association said:
"The United States has one of the most stringent visa application processes in the world," Yousefzadeh said. "The need for tightening the application process further is really unknown and unclear."
(This article was published in an arrangement with Reuters.)
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