Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing enhanced social media vetting and will this have an impact on Fiancé and Marriage Visas for the United States. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the BBC, bbc.com, the article is titled: US halts Student Visa appointments and plans expanded social media vetting. Quoting directly: "US President Donald Trump's Administration has ordered US Embassies around the world to stop scheduling appointments for Student Visas as It prepares to expand social media vetting of such applicants. An official memo said social media vetting would be stepped up for student and foreign exchange visas, which would have "significant implications" for Embassies and Consulates." 

Yeah, that's an understatement, okay. If they are knocking student visas just completely out of the box - they're just not issuing them - that is a huge piece of the Consular workload at any Embassy, like a huge piece. Also something to think about, it's a huge knock to the fee generation abilities of these Embassies and Consulates around the world because it is my understanding they sort of lockbox their Consular fees. So the fees that they generate locally from Non-immigrant Visa applications like Student Visas and Tourist Visas, they keep locally and can repurpose for local purposes at each Embassy and Consulate and if you are not doing Student Visas anymore, I have got to imagine that's going to be a huge blow to the budgets of these Embassies and Consulates on a local level.

That said, quoting further: "It comes during a wide-ranging Trump crackdown on some of America's most elite universities. He sees these institutions as too left-wing - accusing them of failing to combat antisemitism when pro-Palestinian protests have unfolded on campuses." I'm not going to get into all that. Their reasons for doing this frankly are beyond the scope of this video. But what I want to get into is this reminds me a lot of the so-called “Muslim ban” that we talked about in Trump's first Administration where I said at the time - and people didn't listen to me, I was panned in the comments - I said at the time this Muslim ban will have broader implications because I read the memo and the information that was coming out talking about the protocols and procedures and mechanisms they were going to use to enforce the “so-called” Muslim ban. And one of the protocols that I noticed was this further “social media vetting”. And I said at the time and I'm restating it now, when they talk about this “social media vetting”, it tends to bleed out into all of the immigration adjudications that you see going through an Embassy or Consulate. What does that mean? That means that when you apply for a Visa which you already on the DS-260, and on the DS-160 now have to disclose certain social media applications you use and things, they are already looking okay, and I expect they are going to be looking even deeper when they are looking at whether or not somebody is a bona fide fiancé(e) of someone. Well have they been seen with somebody else in a sort of romantic manner on their Facebook, and it is not the person who they claim to be going to the United States to see. I am not saying that is going to happen, but it would not at all surprise me when you hear about official memos talking about “enhanced social media vetting”. Again, this has the tendency to go broader; it does not have the tendency to stay narrowly focused. We saw that with the Muslim ban. Everybody was, " oh, it just pertains to those countries", and then I made the videos at the time as to how those policies were having local impacts even here in Thailand because again aspects of those so-called “Muslim ban policies” were being applied across the board. 

Again, I'm not saying this is a forgone conclusion, but I definitely think it is something to look out for with regard to US Immigration as we move forward through 2025.