Social media is always helpful platform for everybody. Now US immigration services officers will use it to collect the information about those who are seeking for visa, citizenship and green card. Yes you read it right; these days officers will create fake social media account to catch the suspect. We are talking about US Citizenship and Immigration Service Officers who are playing their roles to create fraud profiles in social media. Reason behind creating such profile is to check each activity or you can say they properly monitor social media information on foreigners for seeking visas, green card and citizenship. 

Do you want to visit US then you must have social media account.

Are you agree with this decision? Do you think that these officers are playing good role to catch the wrong person for entering in the United States? If you remember, in my previous blog I mentioned that if you want to visit the US then you must have the social media account. The decision is not bad as they can watch out every activity which is important for them to know about every visitors. After getting information from social media account they can decide whether to give permission to visit or not. Here officers don’t have the authority to chat with the applicant they only can get information. Social media is a platform where no one can hide anything from anyone. Let’s understand the whole story going on these days related to this matter.

New update of the Homeland Security Department regarding this policy.

  • The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services are now allowed to create fake social media profile where they can get into deep to check individual’s profile who applied for visas, green card and US Citizenship.
  • Many social media account have access to reach on the individual so it is the best platform for the officers to check the details to know the person is suspect or not after watching his/her profile.
  • Officers have only authority to check the profile which is publicly available. They can’t follow or send friend request to any individuals.
  • USCIS will use the fake account only for those applicants on which officers have doubt.

At first officers don’t had the right to do all such activities by creating a fake profile on social media to check individual’s profile. Now, few days back on August 30, 2019 policy has been reversed. They are allowed to create fake account for individual’s enquiry who applied to visit the United States. Even USCIS also explained in their statement regarding this matter that creating a fake social media profile can be helpful for them. Such monitoring services give signals to them whether to allow someone to enter in the United States or not. It depends on the social media activities of individual.

Will Facebook and Twitter allow doing so?

Social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter already suspended many fake accounts. If you don’t know then let me remind you, these platforms already shut down the account of Chinese government who use these platforms under incorrect identities regarding information operation. Twitter said “It is against our policies to use fake personae and to use Twitter data for persistent surveillance of individuals. We look forward to understanding USCIS’s proposed practices to determine whether they are consistent with our terms of service.” 

US immigration officer use fake social media account to check people entering country
Image Credit: Google Image

Facebook didn’t reply till now whether they will allow or not to investigate the personal with fake social account.

Conclusion

If you are planning to go to the United States then you must read out the blog to understand what’s going on. This is not so easy from now onward. Even right now social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook didn’t make it clear that they will allow or not for this policy. Recently we heard many cases in which Facebook and Twitter suspended lots of fake account. Do you think that Officers of USCIS will achieve success in this mission? Retired FBI agent Mike German said “it’s important for strong guidelines to be in place and for lawmakers to ask lots of questions to ensure there are no abuses.”

German also said that “It’s easy to conjure up a use where the use is appropriate and entirely necessary, but also where it could be abused.” Well, whatever the situation will be but we must say the policy is good and will give the positive result. We will update you if we get any information regarding US government policy. Till then keep reading and get in touch with us for more updates.