VISA Act of 2017 (Visa Applicant Social Media Screening)
Current understanding
The VISA Act of 2017 was introduced to require the Department of State and DHS to conduct social media background checks, in-person interviews for applicants aged 11 and older, and deploy analytics software to detect fraud and national security threats across all visa and immigration benefit applications. For individuals, this would expand government review of publicly available online activity as a routine input to immigration adjudications; for companies (particularly social media platforms), the practical effect would be increased government scraping/analysis of user-generated content, though the bill does not itself impose direct obligations on platforms. Status: introduced; no evidence of enactment.