US Wants Social Media Background Checks on Visa Application

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Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani who also lived in Saudi Arabia before coming to the U.S. via the K-1 visa, which is given to the fiancées of Americans, made a pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who is a leader of the Islamic State terror group and posted it on Facebook using a different username. On the very same day the Facebook post was published, Malik and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook reportedly killed 14 people at a holiday gathering in San Bernardino, California before they were shot to death by the police.

In hindsight, the US Department of Homeland Security is now planning to make use of the social media accounts to vet people who undergo visa application process before they could be allowed to enter the country, according to the Wall Street Journal.

This move, which is part of three pilot programs by the DHS regarding the use of social media in the screening process, come on the heels of the San Bernardino shooting. Malik made it known online about her intentions to be a part of jihad a couple of years back, but because her social media accounts were not looked into, she still got the visa, wrote CBS News. Some people believe that the 14 lives would have been saved if not for this.

Today, the investigators are looking for any hints in Facebook posts, computer records, and elsewhere that could have given away the possibility of a terror threat from the couple. The lawmakers are also pushing for a legislation that would require the inclusion of social media scrutiny for anyone applying for visa entry into the United States, reports Fox News.

"Fearing a civil liberties backlash and "bad public relations" for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end the secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, according to a former senior department official," wrote ABC News.

Meanwhile, Ibrahim Cooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the country's largest Muslim organizations, said that they are not protesting against this more stringent screening process with the use of social media as long as it is not done to discriminate a particular group.

"We are not opposed to any measure that makes our nation more secure, but measures that target only one faith group, only one ethnic group of people a certain national origin, that raises concerns and it is so counterproductive to our nation's security," he said.