Jensen La Vende

So­cial ac­tivist Abeo Jack­son is de­scrib­ing the lat­est re­quire­ment when ap­ply­ing for a Unit­ed States visa as a form of black­mail.

In a tweet on Wednes­day, the US Em­bassy stat­ed: “Ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, all in­di­vid­u­als ap­ply­ing for an H1‑B or H4 non-im­mi­grant visa are re­quest­ed to ad­just the pri­va­cy set­tings on all of their so­cial me­dia ac­counts to ‘pub­lic’ to fa­cil­i­tate vet­ting nec­es­sary to es­tab­lish their iden­ti­ty and ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty to the Unit­ed States un­der US law.”

In June, the US State De­part­ment re­vealed that stu­dent visa ap­pli­cants will now be re­quired to un­lock their so­cial me­dia ac­counts for gov­ern­ment re­view.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter the an­nounce­ment was made, Jack­son ref­er­enced Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gary Aboud, who had his visa re­voked last month, say­ing many are afraid to speak out, fear­ing they too would be tar­get­ed. She added that she gives grace to those forced in­to si­lence by the threat of visa re­vo­ca­tion.

“This is about ex­tor­tion, it’s about black­mail, it’s about si­lenc­ing dis­sent, and it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly tar­get­ing peo­ple and spaces that are in many ways the peo­ple who are re­spon­si­ble for the labour that built the eco­nom­ic wealth, you know, coun­tries com­ing out of the glob­al south, etc. This is geopo­lit­i­cal pow­er, this is about glob­al hege­monies try­ing to re-es­tab­lish them­selves in a par­tic­u­lar way,” she said.

Aboud’s visa was re­voked in No­vem­ber. He said the US Em­bassy said it took the ac­tion based on in­for­ma­tion that be­came avail­able af­ter the visa was is­sued, in­di­cat­ing that he may be in­ad­mis­si­ble to the Unit­ed States and there­fore in­el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive a visa.

Aboud ex­plained that he at­tained a US visa at the age of 15, and there had nev­er been any is­sues.

Ac­cord­ing to the US Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion’s (CBP) De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Manda­to­ry So­cial Me­dia sub­head­ing, in com­ply­ing with the Jan­u­ary 2025 Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der 14161, the CBP is adding so­cial me­dia as a manda­to­ry da­ta el­e­ment for an Elec­tron­ic Sys­tem for Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (ES­TA) ap­pli­ca­tion. The da­ta el­e­ment will re­quire ES­TA ap­pli­cants to pro­vide their so­cial me­dia from the last five years.

Mean­while, da­ta pro­tec­tion and AI gov­er­nance con­sul­tant Rishi Ma­haraj said the de­ci­sion is in keep­ing with US sov­er­eign­ty, and ap­pli­cants should be wary of their so­cial me­dia posts.

He said the shift in US visa pol­i­cy can be used as a weapon.

“Your da­ta can be weaponised against you. This is some­thing that could pos­si­bly hap­pen when they are weapon­is­ing your nat­ur­al free­doms of ex­pres­sion and views and choice as a weapon to de­ny you the abil­i­ty to ei­ther get a tourist visa or, in the case of the H1B visa, the abil­i­ty to work and go to a dif­fer­ent place to work,” he said.

He warned that at­tempt­ing to rush and scrub your so­cial me­dia of posts may not be the best re­sponse to the new US visa re­quire­ment.

“Even if you delete it, it doesn’t make much sense, be­cause again, the US gov­ern­ment would prob­a­bly have the abil­i­ty to, you know, go to the dif­fer­ent so­cial me­dia posts to see, es­pe­cial­ly if you’re flagged as a se­cu­ri­ty risk, to see ex­act­ly what was there. So you can’t re­al­ly, ful­ly delete it.”

Ma­haraj said cre­at­ing a dum­my pro­file to avoid scruti­ny is al­so not rec­om­mend­ed.

“Peo­ple are try­ing to game the sys­tem and cre­ate al­ter­nate pro­files and stuff like that. But again, is it pos­si­ble for you to do that? The an­swer is yes. Can it be used as a way to trick? I would say prob­a­bly no, be­cause again, all pro­files are linked to some unique iden­ti­fi­er, which is, you know, your email ad­dress or your phone or some­thing. There’s al­ways some way to be able to link it back to you or to cre­ate that av­enue,” he said.

In Oc­to­ber this year, the US can­celled the visas of at least six peo­ple for so­cial me­dia com­ments made about the mur­der of right-wing in­flu­encer Char­lie Kirk.

In a post on X, the US De­part­ment of State wrote: “The Unit­ed States has no oblig­a­tion to host for­eign­ers who wish death on Amer­i­cans.”

It shared screen­shots of six so­cial me­dia posts, which were ex­am­ples of for­eign visa hold­ers wel­com­ing Kirk’s death in Sep­tem­ber.

Kirk, who was an al­ly of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, was mur­dered while speak­ing in Utah.