On March 6, 2025, the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) office released a proposal for a new requirement for immigrants trying to get visas or citizenship in the U.S. This new rule would require immigrants to share their social media information as part of the immigration process.
The proposal frames this move as a way to defend national security and prevent terrorism, despite immigrants being less likely to commit crimes than citizens (see NPR, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, American Immigration Council, and Scientific American). Considering the current administration’s heavy-handed approach to handling dissenting views (i.e., firing federal employees who do not agree with the administration, censoring media and research that potentially goes against the administration’s views, etc.), I believe this new proposed rule is a way for the administration to deny residency and citizenship to individuals who do not agree with the current administration.
It is a blatant violation of free speech, and a waste of time and taxpayer money on an already arduous, lengthy, and expensive process. I have been outspoken against a collection of social media info in my field of personnel selection, and I will be outspoken against it now. People have a right to free speech and privacy (especially if their social media profiles are private). This is a, frankly, Orwellian proposal, so I urge my fellow Americans to leave a comment on the proposal to urge USCIS to toss it out. The proposal is open for comment until May 5, 2025.
The proposal states that the time impact will be relatively small at the individual level, but it is hundreds of thousands of hours of time overall that will be spent on this social media vetting. That is time that costs U.S. taxpayers money, as our taxes pay the wages of the people doing this work. In addition, with all the recent cuts to federal employees, the immigration process has already been slowed down, and this would just be yet another delay in an already tedious process.
Illinois Tech is a community full of international students, and I believe that domestic students have a duty to help our peers out, and this includes voicing our dissent to blatant overreach from the government. Again, I urge all Americans to leave a comment on the proposal to urge USCIS to get rid of it.