A US visa is a privilege, not a right’: Irish education applicants must disclose five years of social media profiles

Irish Times ^ | Mon Jun 23 2025 11:57 | Kate Byrne, Pat Leahy

[Olog-hai]

Irish students seeking US educational and exchange visas will be required to make their social media profiles public to allow officials to review their online activity, the US Embassy in Dublin has said.

In a statement on Monday, the embassy said the US State Department is “committed to protecting our nation and our citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process”.

“A US visa is a privilege, not a right,” it said.

The embassy said visa applicants will be required to list all social media usernames or handles for every platform they have used from the last five years on their visa application form so these accounts can be vetted. […]

Taoiseach Micheal Martin condemned the new requirements as “excessive” and said that they will cause “fear and anxiety” among young people.

“I believe those measures by the United States are excessive. I don’t approve of them and I don’t agree with them,” he said. …

[epluribus_2]

Do students from “asian” and middle east countries get an exemption?

[epluribus_2]

“committed to protecting our nation and our citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process”.

How about making all students make a public oath agreeing with these ideals.

[Socon-Econ]

Disclosure to get a visa makes sense.

Disclosure by citizens to get a non-security related private job should be banned. The leftists running HR nowadays will use it for no good.

[Salman]

Real spies will have clean social media profiles.

Here is *my* social media profile ==> { nothing }

[libertylover]

I've never had a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media account.

Me neither, but I've been on FreeRepublic for a long time and I have an email account.

[FormerFRLurker]

Agree 100%. The last thing we need is to normalize government scrutiny of people’s social media accounts. It may affect only visa applicants now, but once the precedent has been set the government can use that against US citizens as well, particularly if there’s a war or terrorist attack. From there it’s just a short hop to China’s social credit score program.

[Albion Wilde]

How about making all students make a public oath agreeing with these ideals.

Wouldn't work on the students whose religion teaches taqiyya.

[HereInTheHeartland]

This is a bit too close to a social credit score that the ChiComs use.
I understand the why of doing it

[epluribus_2]

Ah yes, agreed.