State Department Begins Social Media Review of Foreign Journalist Visa Applicants

Foreign journalists seeking U.S. visas must make social media accounts public for review.

On 18 September 2026 the State Department announced that, from 1 October, consular officers would review the online presence of applicants for I visas — the visa class for foreign journalists and other media representatives working in the United States — and of applicants for TN and TD visas, which cover Canadian and Mexican professionals and their dependents. Applicants were instructed to set the privacy settings on all their social media profiles to “public” or “open.” Reuters had reported the planned extension to journalists in August, citing an internal State Department memo.

The I visa was the latest class added to a review the department had extended step by step since 2025: first to student and exchange-visitor applicants, then to H-1B workers and their dependents in December 2025, and to further categories in March 2026. Announcing the change, the State Department said that “receiving a U.S. visa remains a privilege granted at the government’s discretion, not an entitlement.” A policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association said the department had not published the standards officers would apply, and that “visa decisions could be based on something very subjective.”

The review followed a Department of Homeland Security rule, issued in July 2026, that replaced the open-ended stay previously allowed to I visa holders with a fixed limit of 240 days, or 90 days for Chinese nationals. The Committee to Protect Journalists said of that rule that the administration had “moved to—yet again—deny access based on its individual policing of a journalist’s reporting.”