US asks student visa applicants to make social media accounts public

Effective immediately, this move is carried out in order to facilitate the vetting process, to establish the applicants' identity and admissibility to the nation under law.

“Every visa adjudication is a national security decision. 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 personal social media accounts to 'public' to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States,” said the US Embassy in India (@USAndIndia) in an X post on Monday.

In the second slide of the same post, the US embassy said that the country has been requiring all visa applicants to provide social media identifiers on immigrant and non-immigrant visa application forms.