The U.S. governnment is planning to make getting an ‘ESTA’ more cumbersome for foreign visitors, demanding five years of social media history in exchange for permission to enter the United States.
People coming from ‘visa waiver’ countries don’t go through the full visa process, but still need electronic permission – a ‘visa lite’. And U.S. Customs and Border Protection has filed a proposal for notice and comment adding a social media field to the form, with applicants required to “provide their social media from the last 5 years.” In addition, they’ll take down the ESTA website application process and make it mobile-only.
There are other new requirements as well:
- “High value data fields” added to ESTA: phone numbers (5 years), emails (10 years), IP/metadata from submitted photos, extensive family member information, and even “biometrics – face, fingerprint, DNA, and iris,” plus business contact fields.
- CBP describes an optional “Voluntary Self-Reported Exit” feature that collects facial images and geolocation and uses biometric matching to confirm departure.
Press coverage is misreading this as applying to ‘all tourists’ or ‘all countries’ when this is limited to travelers from visa waiver countries entering on an ESTA. So not all travelers, and not all countries.
And the text of the rule does not say “5 years of social media history/activity.” It does not specify “posts,” “messages,” “likes,” “content,” or “passwords.” It says applicants must “provide their social media from the last 5 years.”
This likely cashes out as usernames, not a literal export of five years of content. However, the wording in the notice is sloppy enough that media headlines can plausibly overstate what’s happening. Coverage also understates the significance or ignores the move to mobile-only applications.
This Is Going To Be Messy
The lack of definition in scope is going to lead to unavoidable compliance errors and too broad a discretion for the agency. “Provide their social media from the last 5 years” is not a workable standard without a definition – there’s no list of platforms, discussion of how to handle multiple accounts or shared accounts, pseudonyms, deleted accounts, messaging apps and forums? This may mean arbitrary denials and inconsistent enforcement.
Self-reported social handles and long lookback windows generate low-quality data (forgotten accounts, typos, ambiguity, duplicates). That pushes the system toward either ignore the data or come up with bad results.
While there are countries today using mobile-only, this also creates complications (no smartphone, locked-down corporate phone, region/app store issues, NFC limitations, usability for older travelers).
With all the additional data collection, as well, anything “flagged” is likely to turn ESTA from near-instant to a days-long approval process.
Does This Actually Make Us Safer?
The strongest case for the proposed changes isn’t social media handle disclosure, it’s the mobile selfie identity-verification track. Currently, the agency says, poor-quality image uploads on the ESTA website have allowed applicants to bypass facial-comparison screening. They claim travelers exploit this.
In addition, the website cannot validate ePassport chip certificates, so a move to mobile-only supports chip verification and stronger document authentication.
The notice, though, does not contain evidence to support any security benefit to social media vetting. In fact, the only rationale provided is compliance with Executive Order 14161 – the President’s call for this. (They say they’re doing it because the President said to.)
In any case, making social media handle disclosure mandatory still runs up against the binding constraint of analysis capacity and false positives. Addressing those might improve vetting. Raw data isn’t lacking.
Instead, “face, fingerprint, DNA, and iris” included in the definition of high value data seems like both overreach and “collect everything we might ever want.”
This Is A Costly Effort
According to CBP’s filing, 14,484,073 ESTA Mobile submissions annually, at 22 minutes each, means 5,310,827 burden hours per year. At, say, $35 per hour that’s $186 million.
That doesn’t include the extra work of compiling five years of social accounts plus additional “high value” fields. Then there’s the additional manual view of submissions.
Plus, if CBP treats omissions from a five year history as suspicious, denial rates rise. If they don’t, the field becomes mostly performative.
My worry, though, is what this means for international visitors to the United States, and the resulting effects on flight options and jobs for Americans as well as economic growth.
- Visitors spend over $20 billion a month in the U.S. (each spends about $4,000)
- Even detering a few percentage points of trips could cost hundreds of millions to multiple billions
- And this comes on top of other recent measures like the June 2025 travel ban on high risk countries; the $250 “Visa Integrity Fee” and higher overall visa costs; elimination of third country visa renewal (people having to return to home country); tightening of student visas; and ideological screening.
And we’re aleady seeing a drop in international travel spending in the U.S. (for a variety of reasons). That means fewer flights. Air Canada has at least five U.S. routes for winter 2025–26 (secondary U.S. cities to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver) due to soft transborder demand. Porter has suspended routes. WestJet has shifted capacity to Europe. American Airlines is dropping New York JFK – Toronto in May.
Route cuts don’t just mean fewer seats for tourists. They also mean less cargo capacity, which tends to raise freight prices or push freight onto longer and less efficient routings. It reduces schedule convenience for U.S.-origin passengers (more connections, worse timings). And it makes it harder for U.S. carriers to sustain spokes and smaller markets that rely on feed from international traffic.
Other countries, by the way, may mirror these requirements for U.S. travelers as well, so it doesn’t just affect foreigners. And that exacerbates the effect.
Bottom-Line: It’s A Self-Own
There’s almost no serious, evidence-backed cost-benefit work in the public record for things like mandatory social-media handles for ESTA, the Visa Integrity Fee, or forcing in-person interviews for children and octogenarians. But these deter visitors, which reduces economic activity that supports flights for Americans and U.S. jobs. This looks “tough on foreigners” – at the expense of Americans.
I’m not saying it’s racism and xenophobia. There’s also security bias, performative toughness for domestic politics, and bureaucratic empire-building. But this isn’t a serious ‘America First’ policy.
What could go wrong?
I’ll call it xenophobia.
For those of us old enough to remember: this reminds me of the days when trying to visit a country behind the Iron Curtain. It took 6 to 9 months to get a visa approved, and that was only after intensive research was done on each and every potential traveler.
I hate to break it to you but the damage has been done and this is just the “frosting on the cake”. The craziness of this country has reached an all time high. Even the people that were born here want to leave in record numbers. ( I can already hear the idiots that support the wanna-be fascists saying “don’t let the door hit you is the arse” which will prove my point of why people no longer want to visit )
Sorry Gary, but this about xenophobia and racism. It is that simple.
The end of free speech in America.
Once you empower the brown shirts only a war can get rid of them.
Doesn’t the NSA already quietly collect this intel as part of their remit?
This seems like security theater.
As currently announced, I’ll call it a sure way to keep right-thinking, right-acting people from choosing to visit the USA and a huge hit to our economy. As the airlines usd to say ‘Thank you for flying our airline; we know you had a choice’.
It’s not practical. One thing if it was solely for student and work visas. I’m all for controlling who comes into this country to avoid overstays but this won’t work. Some AI slop spitting out a bunch of people for some clueless, overworked Department of State bureaucrat to review?
Give up all social media. Like when applying for a job in a bank. Not going to happen. => Red Herring.
In any case, I won’t give up my “Other Just Saying” handle on VFTW. :)-
Good luck with that.
Maybe get rid of all social media and solve the problem.
Great perspective, Gary. This move will absolutely further dent US inbound tourism, as if we need more of that.
This seems like security theater along with another way to bloat the government.
Mobile only to verify chip passports and require current photos? Sure that makes sense.
The rest is just insanity, and it will backfire into other countries asking US tourists for more personal data.
Yeah, how CCP of them to even suggest this overreach. And, if they can do this with ‘visitors,’ they’ll most certainly do this with ‘citizens,’ too, all while companies that provide such software and services, who happen to be donors, reaping untold benefits and billions.
You’d think the libertarians here would furious, yet, because their ‘team’ proposed it, I presume, they’ll cheer for this, ignoring the slippery slope, anti-privacy, and totalitarian methods employed here. Folks, your team may be in-charge for now, but, won’t be forever. Keep that in mind.
Just like that Senator recently proposing to eliminate dual citizenship, this is a bad idea. And, as with the new laws elsewhere, they’ll claim it’s for ‘national security,’ and to prevent terror, yet, in reality, it’s just another cash-grab, distraction, and way for those in-power to control us all.
@Other Just Saying — I like that ‘make me’ approach to this.
@jns — Ok, you’ll have to get rid of comments on sites like Gary’s… bad idea. For real, though, we do need sensible regulation of the major monopoly social media companies like Facebook, etc. Australia just did something very interesting, attempting to keep 16 and under off it. We’ll see…
Unlike post-9/11, we don’t even get the folksy-ness of W… ‘now watch this drive.’
(‘Mission Accomplished’)
Gary, yes, it is in big part xenophobia and racism. It is also political bigotry. I hope you like living in the the NEW US SR
Trump has been wrecking everything he touches his entire life. This comes as no surprise, I was waiting for him to demand an oath of fealty at the airport. He’ll die before this gets near a bill, so I’m not going to worry much about it.
@jns – It would be easier and better to just get rid of Trump and leave social media alone.
Choke on it libs. As your idol Obama said “elections have consequences”
@Caesonia — It really is feeling more and more like late-90s post-Soviet Russia, or early 2000s early-Putin era. Like, was the Simpsons right the whole time… “that’s what we wanted you to think…”
@Retired gambler — Can’t. It’s too small to choke on.
Deterrent to tourism is one thing but what about business travelers. They are not going to want government randos and AI accessing their personal files. Paranoid isolationism will continue to strengthen trade that excludes the U.S.. This is so stupid.
This is so far removed from the topic at hand, and I apologize, but I just wanted to bring it to everyone’s attention. I have a deal on my Capital One Offers that if I spend $1,000 at British Airways, I’ll receive 50,000 miles. That’s Cap One miles, not BA miles. It might be worth taking a look at your own situation.
Good, hope it keep people from “$hithole” countries away as well as opinionated lefties.
@Ray
Good, I’m getting what I voted for. I don’t see people like you as my ‘countrymen’ I see you as my enemy.
@Caesonia
I’m very happy it is what I wanted and voted for.
Lol- gotta love the “owning the lib’s” response of Retired Gambler- I’m sure he will also blame the last president when he can’t get a visa to travel to Europe.
Those guys just gotta cut off their own nose to spite their face…
@Mike P — Good deal, honestly. Wish C1 would actually approve me. Bah!
@Walter Barry — He’s calling it ‘hell-hole’ now… get the memo… sheesh! Yeah, we know, you voted for the racism and bigotry. Could you go ‘hard-r’ and tell us how you really feel?
This doesn’t trouble me at all. I’ve lived in many countries on many different kinds of visas with many different procedures to get permission to enter or live there – not all of which have been granted – and I don’t find this to be particularly egregious or burdensome at all. Protecting the people in the United States should be far more important to the United States government than unencumbered mass tourism, and people who are not peaceable and who exhibit hostility or aggression to the people who live in the United States shouldn’t be allowed in. The vast majority of people in the world won’t have to worry about this, and if you’re an edge case and do need to worry than I’m not unhappy to have you excluded.
Of course it’s all about xenophobia and racism. As I was traveling in another country earlier this year, a well informed business traveler asked me, “Why does the American government make everything so ‘U.S.A. against the world’ now?” My comment referenced views I have about the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
@DaveS You seem very worried about xenophobia and racism against the people who want to travel to the United States, and that’s fair enough. But is it at all important to you to protect Americans from xenophobia and racism from the people who want to travel to the United States? Should there be any exceptions? Or should we just allow those who we know are racists advocating violence into the USA for tourism without any restrictions at all?
Should we admit people calling for the return of slavery? How about those advocating lynching gay or trans people? How about those who think immodest women should be stoned to death? How about calling for genocide against Jews? Do you have any limits at all?
Such people to me are undesirable and potentially dangerous to America and Americans, and I don’t see why we should allow them in if we can easily exclude them. How is excluding explicitly violent racists, racist?
This is for countries in the visa waiver program who are, supposedly, our friends. Man, this is going to be a mess for them and a mess for US citizens when every country reciprocates. Who needs international travel when we can just go on the Small World ride at Disneyland/Disney World.
kimmiea in 1973 I had no trouble getting visas to travel by train from West Germany to Turkey via Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. They just wanted me to spend about $10 a day in each country. This is far worse.
But I wonder how this policy will work with those who, like me, have no interest in ever getting a social media account. They won’t believe that? They will insist I get one and not use it? Ridiculous.
@drrichard — That is until they consider pseudonyms at VFTW to be ‘social media’… *gulp*
Wouldn’t be a problem for me. I’d open up my first social media account and post pro-UzS posts. How in the world would they find my posts here? Plus, despite my anti-Trump posts, my hatred for the constant poster would make me look better.
What is social media? Is it just Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter)? Or is it VFTW, Flyertalk.com, and a lot of forums? There are plumbing forums, car forums specific to brands, etc.
How does one obtain metadata?
I could not have more contempt and disdain for the US (and I am an American) than I do right now, and I am very proud of it. It’s not just this wretched administration but a nation where 78+ million voted in favor of this. Hopefully each and every country reciprocates against this folly, applies tariffs on all US goods coming into their countries, and perhaps those countries too can apply sanctions against the US.