Sheila Lim, 25, travels from Singapore to the United States every year to spend Christmas with her boyfriend and his family in California, usually staying for nearly a month.
She has never had trouble entering the country, but on her most recent trip she noticed immigration queues moving more slowly than before.
“This November, I waited two hours in line,” Lim told This Week in Asia.
That experience has left her uneasy about a new US proposal that would require visa-exempt travellers to submit five years of social media history before entering the country – a change that has raised privacy concerns among frequent visitors from Asia.
Under the proposal, which authorities have said could take effect as early as February, travellers from countries covered by the US Visa Waiver Programme would be required to provide social media history and expanded personal information when applying through the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA), an online system that allows eligible visitors to travel visa-free to the US for tourism or business for up to 90 days.
The prospect of closer scrutiny has unsettled Lim, particularly when it comes to private accounts.
“It’s not a bad thing if it makes people think twice about what they post online … but I think the biggest question is which platforms they will be sifting through too,” she said.
