Canadian permanent residents may need to reveal 5 years of social media history to enter U.S.

A new rule proposed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) could require Canadian residents who are not citizens of Canada to divulge their social media history before they can enter the United States.

Under the proposed change, listed as “mandatory social media,” anyone applying for ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) would be required to provide five years of social media history.

Rosanna Berardi, an immigration expert in Buffalo, N.Y., told National Post that the change will not affect Canadian citizens with a valid passport, since they do not require an ESTA to visit the U.S.

Rather, ESTA is for travellers from Visa Waiver Program (VWP) countries, a list of 42 nations that includes most European countries as well as Australia, Japan, Singapore and others. Qatar is the most recent addition to the list.

“Canadian citizens traveling on a Canadian passport are not part of the Visa Waiver Program and therefore do not complete ESTA for standard short-term visits (tourism, business meetings, etc.),” Berardi said. “They are admitted under a separate, longstanding visa-exempt regime between the U.S. and Canada.”

She added: “The only time a Canadian might encounter something similar is if they are applying for a formal U.S. visa (for example, certain long-term or specialized categories processed at a consulate). Those applications already involve extensive security questions, and in some cases social media identifiers.”

However, non-Canadians living in Canada who already require a visa to enter the U.S. would be subject to the new rule.

“In order to comply with the January 2025 Executive Order 14161 (Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security Threats), CBP is adding social media as a mandatory data element for an ESTA application,” the memo from the Department of Homeland Security states. “The data element will require ESTA applicants to provide their social media from the last 5 years.”

The document, published Wednesday in the U.S. Federal Register, does not provide further details regarding which social media platforms this would include, or how the history would be handed over.

The document also suggests that “high value data fields” could be added to the ESTA application, including personal and business phone numbers used in the last five years, email addresses used in the last 10 years, and a list of family members, including their phone numbers and dates and places of birth.

It invites comments from the public over the next 60 days.

Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney at digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a statement to the New York Times that the new rule would “exacerbate civil liberties harms.”

She added: “It has not proven effective at finding terrorists and other bad guys. But it has chilled the free speech and invaded the privacy of innocent travellers, along with that of their American family, friends and colleagues.”

The change follows a decision in June by the State Department to require certain applicants for non-immigrant visas to set their social media profiles to “public” when applying.

“The 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,” it said at the time. ” A U.S. visa is a privilege, not a right.”

Whether the new rules would have a chilling effect on tourism to the U.S. remains to be seen. However, last summer a report from the World Travel and Tourism Council singled out the United States as the only one of 184 nations it studied expected to see a decline in tourism spending this year. The Britain-based group predicted a drop of $12.5-billion.

“This is a wake-up call for the U.S. government,” Julia Simpson, the group’s CEO, said in a release. “The world’s biggest travel and tourism economy is heading in the wrong direction, not because of a lack of demand, but because of a failure to act. While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign.”

Data from Statistics Canada and elsewhere has shown that tourism between Canada and the United States is down this year, as the trade war between the two nations continues.

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