'Wildly excessive' for U.S. to ask visa applicants for social media details: civil liberties expert

The U.S. State Department is now requiring nearly all applicants for American visas to hand over their social media user names, phone numbers and old email accounts — something immigration attorneys and civil liberties experts describe as a "totally unjustified" overreach on the part of the government.

Immigrant and non-immigrant visa forms changed Friday. The new forms list a number of social media platforms and require the applicant to provide any account names they may have had on them over the previous five years. 

Applicants are also now asked for five years of previously used phone numbers, email addresses and other information.

Len Saunders, a U.S. Immigration Attorney who works with Canadian clients from Blaine, Wash., said he found out about the change halfway through filling out a form on Friday.

"It popped up on the green card application and I'm like, 'What?' I had heard they were possibly doing that but all of a sudden, it just magically appeared," Saunders said on Monday.

The new requirements were first proposed in March 2018. They will affect about 15 million foreigners who apply for visas to enter the U.S. every year. Previous requirements for social media, phone number and email histories only affected about 65,000 people per year.

'Totally unjustified': civil liberties expert

The state department said collecting the additional information from more applicants "will strengthen our process for vetting these applicants and confirming their identity."

Micheal Vonn, policy director with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, vehemently disagreed.

"Essentially, what we make of this change is that it is wildly excessive and totally unjustified," Vonn told CBC. "This is fodder for discrimination and profiling.

"It's very clear that the extreme vetting targeting that's been going on — and this is part and parcel of it — has had a devastating impact on people from majority Muslim countries, Muslim people and other 'other' people. I'm deeply concerned about the prejudicial effect to them of these kinds of policies."

Both Saunders and Vonn said it's unclear what kind of information the U.S. government is seeking from applicants' social media accounts, though Vonn said "the chill ... is palpable" anyway.

"People are right to be concerned, especially because they don't know, one, what's going to happen with this information and, two, how it's going to be used — even in the process for which it was ostensibly collected," she said.

Saunders described the change as "overreaching."

"I think it's a complete invasion of people's privacy. What someone does on social media, who their friends are on Facebook, what they like, what they don't like, pictures that they've maybe posted. I don't think that's any business of the U.S. government. I really don't."

Glen Walsh, however, isn't worried. He's one of Saunders' clients, a Canadian retiree applying for a green card in the U.S.

"I had about 15 minutes to think about it and really, I've got nothing to hide," said Welsh, who once worked as a lineman.

"I'd say it's a footprint of your thought process. If it involves safety of any kind, I'd say they have the right and it's their country and they make the rules and if you want to join the club you accept the rules."

The new requirements do not affect Canadians who are only visiting the U.S., but Saunders said that could change.

"Who knows how far they're going to go. Like, it's a slippery slope," he said.