The Trump administration has previously required foreign nationals to make their social media accounts public if they are applying for student visas or H1B visas for skilled workers – the latter of which now also entail a much higher fee.<\/p>\n
A senior state department official said of the student visa policy: “It is an expectation from American citizens that their government will make every effort to make our country safer, and that is exactly what the Trump Administration is doing every single day.” <\/p>\n
Officers were instructed to screen for those “who advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to national security; or who perpetrate unlawful anti-Semitic harassment or violence”.<\/p>\n
As part of the administration’s broader effort to toughen borders, officials recently said an existing travel ban – affecting 19 countries in Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean – could soon be expanded. <\/p>\n
That move was announced in the wake of a shooting attack on two National Guard members in Washington DC, in which an Afghan man has been named as the suspect. <\/p>\n
The new proposal regarding ESTA data collection for tourists invites views from the public for 60 days. <\/p>\n
Sophia Cope, of digital rights organisation the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticised the plan, telling the New York Times that it could “exacerbate civil liberties harms”.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, immigration law practice Fragomen suggested there could be practical impacts as applicants could face longer waits for ESTA approvals.<\/p>\n
Experts have previously suggested that the changes to travel policies introduced under Trump have had an impact on the American tourism industry. <\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the World Travel & Tourism Council said the US was the only one of 184 economies that it analysed that was expected to see a decline in international visitor spending in 2025.<\/p>\n
Other Trump administration policies have also appeared to impact tourism to the country, such as many Canadians boycotting US travel as a form of protest against Trump’s tariffs.<\/p>\n
October marked the 10th straight month of decline in the number of Canadian travellers to the US. In the past, Canadians have made up about a quarter of all international visitors to the US, spending more than $20bn (\u00a315.1bn) a year, according to the US Travel Association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration has previously required foreign nationals to make their social media accounts public if they are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-308820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}