US visa applicants will now have to make social media accounts public

The new rule has come into effect immediately.

Indian citizens seeking visas to travel to the United States for studies will now have to open up all their social media accounts for vetting.

“Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J non-immigrant visa are requested to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media accounts to public to facilitate vetting,” the US embassy in New Delhi posted on X. It added that the vetting of the social media accounts of the visa applicants was necessary to establish the identity and admissibility of the applicants under the laws of the US.

The US grants F and M visas to foreign students seeking to travel to America to pursue an academic course and a vocational course, respectively. The J visa is granted to foreign students travelling to the US on an exchange programme.

“Since 2019, the US has required visa applicants to provide social media identifiers on immigrant and non-immigrant visa application forms,” the diplomatic mission of Washington, D.C., in New Delhi said in a statement posted on X. “We use all available information in our visa screening and vetting to identify visa applicants who are inadmissible to the United States, including those who pose a threat to US national security.”

President Donald Trump’s administration moved to restrict the flow of foreign students to the US, subjecting the student visa applications to enhanced scrutiny and vetting, particularly in the wake of large-scale protests against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, affecting Palestinian civilians.

In 2023, the US consular team in India issued over 140,000 F-1 student visas – more than in any other country in the world, setting a record for the third year in a row. Taken individually, US consulates in Mumbai, New Delhi, Hyderabad, and Chennai stood as the top four student visa processing posts in the world. Indian students in 2023 became the largest group of international graduate students in the US and make up more than a quarter of the over one million foreign students studying in the US.

In 2024, India became the top sender of international students for the first time since the 2008/2009 academic year, with more than 331,000 students overall studying in the US. India also remained the largest sender of international graduate students in the US for the second year; Indian graduate student numbers increased by 19% to reach almost 200,000 students.

The US embassy on June 19 had said that a US visa was “a privilege, not a right”, and its screening would not stop after the issuance of the visa, and authorities could revoke it if the foreign traveller broke the law. The embassy had also said that using illegal drugs or breaking any US laws while on a student or visitor visa could make one ineligible for future US visas.

Ranjani Srinivasan, a PhD student at Columbia University, had self-deported from the US after her visa had been revoked for her alleged participation in protests against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. Badar Khan Suri, another Indian student, had been arrested by law enforcement officers for participating in a similar protest at Georgetown University in the US in March, but the move to deport him was stayed by an American court and he had been released from the detention centre.