Hacker News Reader

Comment by ineedtosleep | Hacker News Reader

Pretty absurd that they're asking for all of this and:

> [...] In addition to their social media histories, visa applicants will be asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, international travel and deportation status, as well as whether any family members have been involved in terrorist activities.

I know a number of people going through, or have been through, the US visa process and surely if this is required, applicants are going to drop.

Furthermore, if you submit that you don't have a social media account are they going to assume you're a liar? Are applicants just going to create new "real" accounts just to avoid looking suspicious?

View on HN

> five years of previously used telephone numbers,

I couldn't tell even if I wanted to, I go somewhere, pick up a SIM card, trash it when I leave. These days many countries sell them from machines or newsstands at the airport, this is not unusual any more.

Japan and the UK, both from 2015: https://cdn.techinasia.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Screen... http://travelpal.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploa... and actually even the USA, this is JFK: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CX0y79EWQAAGlfZ.jpg

odds are if you used it for such a short time they wouldnt know either. And it'd be odd if they say "You failed to disclose 555-555-5555" (ok... but you clearly know the number)

> And it'd be odd if they say "You failed to disclose 555-555-5555" (ok... but you clearly know the number)

It would not be at all odd for them to use failure to disclose as a reason for revoking your visa and putting you on a list of people who would be denied entry in the future, and it would be unsurprising if, before kicking you out, they also criminally prosecuted you for lying to the government.

It’s easy to twist that into “you clearly failed to disclose this number because you have something to hide”.

I have the same problem with my employer's background checks... I'm often required to list 7 years of home addresses, and while I'm not quite a digital nomad and have never been homeless, I have moved quite a few times in the past 7 years. Sometimes to places without a permanent address, sometimes spending a few months with friends. Sometimes in states I didn't technically work in, which makes questions about discrepancies really fun. Hell if I can remember all of them. Sometimes I've been known to put down addresses I never officially lived at because I couldn't remember if I ever put in a change of address form or not.

To enter the US I had to disclose my primary school address and all the following ones. I don't know what I would do if the school had disappeared before the internet was big.

>while I'm not quite a digital nomad and have never been homeless, I have moved quite a few times in the past 7 years.

College is still inside my 7 year window, so I get to include 4 college addresses, 4 internship addresses, and a couple since graduating. I've found my Amazon address list to be immensely helpful. I also started a document to track it.

Copy+paste into those horrible background check online forms makes them more tolerable. The last one I did had to be done in 1 sitting and was estimated to take 30 minutes. Spent 2.5-3 hours on it...

Even if you will keep SIM card, after some time of inactivity SIM card will be blocked and phone number will be added to a pool of number for latter reuse. It is not unusual when the same number assigned to a new customer a year or two after it was last used by another customer.

A more hidden effect of this is the chilling effect of this on what would-be immigrants post on social media. E.g. should I remove a photo from the Women's March because it was seen by some as a protest against the current administration?

I actually went back and deleted all my “controversial” social media posts while I was applying for a visa transfer. This was even before this policy announcement. I don’t put it past vindicative people in the administration to causally check out social media posts while adjucating petitions

"deleted"

I don't think this word means what you think it means in today's internet.

This has already happened in New Zealand. If you've ever publicly made controversial statements ("have ever publically made a racist statement" [1]), they can deny you a resident visa unless they arbitrarily decide it's OK.

You might think you're not a racist, but in the UK, racism law extends to criticizing Islam or even questioning aspects of it. So you better not be an outspoken atheist either.

[1] https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-...

Unless NZ is significantly different from most other countries, no one has a right to a resident visa (although some people might have a right to citizenship, such as by descent), so they can already arbitrarily determine whether or not to grant a resident visa.

Sure, but in practice, they don't seem to do that. I've heard of public complaints of denials and it's because the person doesn't actually meet the published criteria, not just "they seemed a bit scary".

It's not just would-be immigrants either. The same kind of social media checks are being used in some places for tenancy applications. Hand over your social media login details to some third party who gives a report to the landlord.

>I know a number of people going through, or have been through, the US visa process and surely if this is required, applicants are going to drop.

That's the point that the administration wants to push.

> Furthermore, if you submit that you don't have a social media account are they going to assume you're a liar?

something like that already happened to me. i was coming into the us as a tourist (and i was a tourist, i was visiting SF because i found really cheap tickets and a cheap airbnb). at border control, the office starts typing at her computer, i asked her if there was something wrong.

she said, and i'm not joking, that she was searching for me on facebook because "she wanted to see the reasoning for me to come and go from the us". i said i had no facebook account (i don't, i don't like facebook) and she said "it was really suspicious for me not to have a facebook account, since everybody had one".

You don't have to be all that cynical to think that the whole idea is to get people to drop their applications.

> visa applicants will be asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, international travel and deportation status,

This has already been the case for at least 4 years. Every visa I’ve ever had asked me to fill out which countries I’ve visited in the past 5 years and whether I was ever deported.

That is significantly different than disclosing social media profiles and different emails. One (filling out travel information) makes sense because...uhhhh...you're crossing another border so it makes sense to disclose previous travel history that coincides with your stamp book on your passport. The other is uhhhh irrelevant to travel information?

I agree, just pointing out that this isn’t new. GP comment implicated that it is.

It is new, based on what your comment. You reported answering different questions.

He was replying to the "international travel and deportation status" portion.

Editing for context avoids such misunderstandings.

> visa applicants will be asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers

Which I think is an interesting admission they have all the calls stored somewhere so they can check them for content...

More likely for who-calls-who social graphing.

> surely if this is required, applicants are going to drop.

That's the point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com