A new immigration policy could mandate prospective citizens give up their social media profiles for review, adding to President Donald Trump's push for stronger border policy and a bottleneck on legal migrant entry.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has opened a 60-day comment period on the proposed change, which would add a request for social media handles to immigration benefit applications for those already residing in the U.S. The requirement would affect those applying for green cards and naturalization, asylum-seekers, refugees, and the relatives of people who have been granted asylum or refugee status, the Verge reported. According to the USCIS, the change would affect approximately 3.5 million people.
The State Department already has a policy in place that requires the disclosure of five years of social media history for foreign nationals applying for visas before they enter the U.S., but the new policy would apply to current U.S. residents who are only seeking to update or change their status.
"These are people who could have been residing in the U.S. for 30, 40 years, as a Green Card holder who are seeking citizenship, or people who are residing on other types of visas who are seeking a Green Card," Saira Hussain, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Newsweek. "It really creates a massive chilling effect about people who could be vetted for their online speech, who have every right to be here in this country and could be chilled from sharing their opinions because they are concerned they are going to be vetted and denied immigration benefits such as naturalization."
The federal agency argues the collection of such data would support more "rigorous" vetting of citizen applicants and modernize the immigration system: "In a review of information collected for admission and benefit decisions, USCIS identified the need to collect social media identifiers ('handles') and associated social media platform names from applicants to enable and help inform identity verification, national security and public safety screening, and vetting, and related inspections," the policy filing reads.
The proposal also invokes a recent Trump administration Executive Order titled, "Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats" — a mandate to amp up scrutiny (and rejections) during the visa-issuance process. At large, the administration has committed to an overhaul of U.S. immigration policy, including mass deportations, an expedited ban on asylum entries at the southern border, and the disempowering of sanctuary cities.
The proposed USCIS policy change will remain open for public comment until May 5. Comments can be submitted on the Federal eRulemaking Portal website, and can be found by inputting the e-Docket ID number: USCIS-2025-0003
