The US says foreign students can start getting visas again, but they’ll have to make their social media accounts public

The US State Department said on Wednesday that it’s resuming its process for approving student visas and that applicants have to make their social media accounts public for review.

“Our overseas posts will resume scheduling F, M, and J nonimmigrant visa applications soon,” the department wrote in a notice, asking applicants to look out for interview appointment slots.

F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas are for full-time academic and vocational students, as well as those entering the US on exchange.

“To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas will be instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to ‘public,'” the government notice added.

This notice neither specified what platforms the US government would vet nor how the checks would be carried out.

But the State Department wrote that the social media reviews would be part of “a comprehensive and thorough vetting, including online presence.”

“Every visa adjudication is a national security decision,” the department wrote.

The decision follows State Secretary Marco Rubio’s initial announcement in late May that his department was pausing all student visa applications as it determined new rules for social media checks.

The department’s spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, said at the time that Rubio and President Donald Trump were looking to only accept visitors who “understand what the law is, that they don’t have any criminal intent, that they are going to be contributors to the experience here, however short or long their status.”

The May suspension came just a little over two months before most universities start the academic year in the US, the country that issues the most foreign student visas out of any the world.

State Department data shows that over 1.12 million foreign students enrolled in US colleges in the 2023 to 2024 academic year, when the figures were last reported in November.

Rubio’s initial decision had also come as the Trump administration barred Harvard University from enrolling foreign students. While a temporary court order has allowed current Harvard students to continue schooling, the university is legally challenging the ban.

Much of the White House’s tension with Harvard and other top US universities stems from the protests and rhetoric that spread on campus as violence and tensions flared in the Middle East after October 2023.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

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