Foreigners seeking to study in the United States will be required to make public their social media profiles to allow screening for anti-American content under new State Department guidelines released Wednesday.

The State Department had temporarily paused issuing visas for foreign students at the end of May while it came up with the new social media guidance and it will now resume taking appointments.

“The enhanced social media vetting will ensure we are properly screening every single person attempting to visit our country,” a senior State Department official said.

US consular officers will conduct a “comprehensive and thorough vetting of all student and exchange visitor applicants,” the official said.

To facilitate the screening, student visa applicants will be asked to adjust the privacy settings on all their social media profiles to “public,” the official said.

In an executive order on his first day as president, Donald Trump called for increased vetting of persons entering the United States to ensure they “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.”

Student visas are one of a series of battles waged over higher education by the Trump administration, which has rescinded thousands of visas and sought to ban Harvard University from accepting international students.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked visas for a large number of students who led demonstrations critical of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, as he uses an obscure law that allows the removal of people deemed to go against US foreign policy interests.

In April, the Department of Homeland Security said the social media of foreign student applicants would be examined for “antisemitic activity” that could result in visa denial.

The US government has been vetting the social media of persons seeking to immigrate to the United States or obtain a green card for more than a decade.

ONLINE PRESENCE

The new vetting process should include a review of the applicant’s entire online presence and not just social media activity, the cable said, urging the officers to use any “appropriate search engines or other online resources.”

During the vetting, the directive asks officers to look for any potentially derogatory information about the applicant.

“For example, during an online presence search, you might discover on social media that an applicant endorsed Hamas or its activities,” the cable says, adding that may be a reason for ineligibility.

Rubio, Trump’s top diplomat and national security adviser, has said he has revoked the visas of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, including students, because they got involved in activities that he said went against US foreign policy priorities.

Those activities include support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza.

A Tufts University student from Turkey was held for over six weeks in an immigration detention center in Louisiana after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. She was released from custody after a federal judge granted her bail.

Trump’s critics have said the administration’s actions are an attack on free speech rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

FEWER APPOINTMENTS?

While the new directive allows posts to resume scheduling for student and exchange visa applicants, it is warning the officers that there may have to be fewer appointments due to the demands of more extensive vetting.

“Posts should consider overall scheduling volume and the resource demands of appropriate vetting; posts might need to schedule fewer FMJ cases than they did previously,” the cable said, referring to the relevant visa types.

The directive has also asked posts to prioritize among expedited visa appointments of foreign-born physicians participating in a medical program through exchange visas, as well as student applicants looking to study in a US university where international students constitute less than 15% of the total.

At Harvard, the oldest and wealthiest US university on which the administration has launched a multifront attack by freezing its billions of dollars of grants and other funding, foreign students last year made up about 27% of the total student population.

The cable is asking the overseas posts to implement these vetting procedures within five business days.