Your papers, please – and tweets, too. This could soon be a new requirement if you want to visit the United States.
Customs and Border Protection filed notice this week that it plans to require tourists from the 42 countries who otherwise can enter without a visa to start sharing their social media activity from the last five years, as well as any email addresses that have been active for the past 10 years. That’s in addition to the names, birth dates, places of residence and birthplaces of parents, spouses, siblings and children.
Giving extra scrutiny to visitors from dangerous countries is defensible, but why does the government need to conduct background checks on every visitor from the U.K., Australia, Japan and South Korea?
This move flows from President Donald Trump’s order that visitors coming into the country, and those already here, must “not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.” No one wants to open the door to visitors who mean to harm Americans upon arrival. But what exactly are the criteria for “hostile attitudes”? Is the Department of Homeland Security screening for X users who frequently share “Death to America,” critical memes of Trump – or both? Does advocating for election interference weigh against a visitor as heavily as lamenting an election result?
These distinctions matter, not least because the current administration has shown repeatedly it is willing to blur speech it does not like with over-torqued claims of national security threats. Prime examples include Turkish Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk and Algerian-Palestinian Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who were detained earlier this year after criticizing Israel’s conduct in its war with Hamas.
DHS may not be violating any constitutional rights by requiring visitors to hand over their social media history when applying for a travel visa, but it certainly breaks with the spirit of the founding principles the administration claims it wants to protect. America’s support for free speech has long been part of what makes the country such a beacon. In contrast, China or Russia have long been in the business of doing deep dives into the social media posts of visitors and refusing entry to people thought to be too critical of those governments.
America’s closest allies are among the 42 countries in the visa waiver program whose visitors would now be subject to these checks. Not only does this seem impractical, creating unnecessary red tape for our friends to navigate when coming to America. It also cedes the free-speech high ground. Can the U.S. inveigh against the U.K. arresting an Irish comedian for his tweets or South Korea enacting “disinformation laws”when it also treats speech as dangerous?
It’s certainly not going to help tourism. Hospitality industry leaders complain they weren’t consulted before the new rule was proposed in the Federal Register, which kicked off a 60-day period for public comment. The agency responds that this is just “the first step in starting a discussion.” If the administration is so interested in reading what foreigners have to say on social media, they should heed the complaints from people across the world who fear old Facebook posts could prevent them from getting to see the World Cup next year.
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