US government agency “friending” people applying for citizenship
eff.org
eff.org
I don't know if it's true, but that, anyway, is conventional wisdom.
Compared to that, "friending" somebody in order to view their social network site seems like small potatoes.
My general sense is that the USCIS mission in these proceedings is to take a skeptical stance from the start. That is, merely applying for a green card (or, by extension, citizenship through marriage) puts you under enough of what EFF calls "suspicion" to warrant an investigation.
I would say the USCIS website itself is a good source of general information for the immigrant/family. After long being criticized as overly bureaucratic and unhelpful they've made a lot of 'customer service' type changes - for example, there's a tool to look up the status of petitions online which is quite new. The latest thing is provide more assistance to people being naturalized, eg via http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/citizenship which got a big makeover just in the last few weeks. Previously the would-be citizen's contact with the agency leading up to naturalization consisted of submitting forms, getting fingerprinted, and having to take the US civics quiz.
Anyhow, separating a couple during the interview typically only happens at a second interview when the USCIS officer (not agent) has specific reasons to doubt the veracity of the relationship - the couple hardly seems to know each other, or their filings are contradictory etc. If they have doubts after the first interview they usually issue a Request For Evidence inviting more documentation/clarification. Policy is to adhere to a neutral rather than skeptical stance by default, and proceed using an evidence-based methodology - challenging or accusing people at random is just going to result in complaints and slows everything down.
Merely applying doesn't put you under 'suspicion,' it's just a process of verification. The FBI does a fingerprint match and checks against the person's name in national and international law enforcement databases - this takes a while just because there's a lot of applications to work through. Most people are legit of course, so then it's just a process of going through the form evaluating the credibility and general stability of the applicant, verifying the authenticity of their marriage certificate/professional qualifications, medical reports etc. etc.
Now when they do suspect fraud, sure they might lie to see if they can catch a person out - as is true of any police interview. But it's not the default position. ICE agents (who go out looking for workplace violations etc.) are a different kettle of fish. There was a fuss at the end of last year about agents Utah in dressing up as Mormon missionaries.
We are not terribly worried, but it's nice to know we won't be put under the bright lights :-)
My advice would be to get all the paperwork filled out exactly right and take extra copies of every single original document. If they want to keep a copy of your electric bill, you can just hand one over.
(Unfortunately, this was by far the most pleasant part of the whole process. Take, for example, the rejection of her application because the NJ State Police aren't certified by the INS for taking fingerprints. Instead, we had to go to a camera shop in Edison, NJ.)
You would think after so many cases of abuse - some large, some small, some invoking Godwin's Law... that people would stop touting the bullshit that is "if you have nothing to hide..."
Wow! You snuck that one in there.
Here is an article by Bruce Schneier you might find interesting, it dissects the lazy assertion that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securityma...
But it is still very important to consider the issue for society and individuals when an agency has "wide latitude" when it does decide it's time to investigate.
In 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy, Daniel Solove writes:
The problems caused by breaches of confidentiality do not merely consist of individual emotional distress; they involve a violation of trust within a relationship. There is a strong social value in ensuring that promises are kept and that trust is maintained in relationships. . .
In that quote Solove is referring to a business giving info to government despite its privacy policy. I think it is germane here because one doesn't expect something labeled "friend" to be an information gathering conduit for a 3rd party (such as governmental one or even a commercial one). The essay a good read for understanding some of the dimensions of privacy in contradiction to the "I've got nothing to hide" concept, which can be a convincing argument when you think you don't have anything to hide:
For background, there are almost 2m applications annually for green card/citizenship, and roughly 2000 prosecutions for immigration fraud.
[extract quoted from memo] In other words, USCIS is specifically instructing its agents to attempt to “friend” citizenship petitioners and their beneficiaries on social networks in the hope that these users will (perhaps inadvertently) allow agents to monitor their activities for evidence of suspected fraud...
Well, if your job is to investigate suspected fraud...
First, the memo makes no mention of what level of suspicion, if any, an agent must find before conducting such surveillance, leaving every applicant as a potential target.
Right...because determinations about whether an application is suspicious will be made before the case file is sent to FDNS. You can browse (almost) all of the Adjudicator's field manual to find out what criteria are used to make that determination; the current version is accessible via http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b...
Nor does the memo address whether or not DHS agents must reveal their government affiliation or even their real name during the friend request (...)
True, but then they're not obliged to wear uniforms or travel in marked cars either.
Second, and perhaps more disturbing, the memo assumes a user’s online profile always accurately reflects her offline life.
No, it says that this is '[g]enerally' the case. It's an outdated 2 page 'did you know?' bulletin, not the guiding legal authority of immigration investigation.
Unfortunately, this memo suggests there’s nothing to prevent an exaggerated, harmless or even out-of-date off-hand comment in a status update from quickly becoming the subject of a full citizenship investigation.
Doubtless there will be a few false positives, but that's why appeal procedures exist. Again, this division's job is to investigate applications that look dubious to begin with; it's not as if the rest of the agency rubber stamps everything sent in to them and FDNS just picks out cases at random, any more than the EFF makes FOIA requests for random document numbers and hopes for the occasional interesting find.
Suppose a plain-clothes USCIS agent comes to find you in a place you are likely to be and chats to you - say in a bar, or your place of work. Is anything they discover during that chat admissible, even if they don't admit to being a USCIS agent? Because if that is okay, then why should a social network be any different?
On the other hand, if that would be inadmissible, or require some evidence beforehand for them to mount such an undercover operation, then viewing your private online data under the pretext of friendship should be out too.
Yes. Once a person has stated or otherwise shown that they are not a US citizen, the burden of proof for eligibility to be present in the US switches to them. A false claim to US citizenship is a felony, though of course exceptions exist.
This is quite different from the legal situation of a US person.
Why not? What is discriminatory about looking you up on facebook? Is the issue the pretext used to get the information, or getting that information at all, or how the information will be used? Your vehement desire for "proper" laws and the ability to sue "them" lacks detail — do you know what you really want, and if so, what is it?
Crooks and other nasty people should be dealt with. Whether they are new or old Americans. But we shouldn't make more things criminal than necessary.
Also AFAIK you don't put a social security number on facebook. Do they just look up John Doe, assume thats you and base their decision on that person?