When it comes to foreigners wishing to visit the super-rich and super-developed nation that is the United States of America, it helps to be from another super-rich, super-developed nation, because then you don’t need a visa to get in for 90 days of tourism or business.
You can look on a federal government world map that shows the 42 countries in the visa waiver program, and see that it includes all the nations of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and for some unexplained reason, Chile. Argentina, no; Chile, si. Go figure.
If you’re not on the Richie Rich list, it gets a lot more complicated to come to our shores, as many applicants to do so who want to see their teams play in the World Cup are about to find out.
But last week, the Trump administration very quietly proposed to in future strain even potential visitors from the fortunate 42 nations through a very interesting, very contemporary filter: The submission of five years of your social media history before being allowed to step onto our shores.
In addition, Customs and Border Protection plans to ask those who want to drop by for the email addresses they have used over the last decade and for the names, phone numbers and addresses of immediate family members.
About 13 million Europeans alone come to the U.S. every year. Can you imagine the time it would take to scroll through the Facebook accounts of each and every one of them? Not to mention X, the, uh, everything app?
Learning of this new development, the reader can be excused for thinking, Wait, this would seem to be the work of a madman!
And then you remember that of course it is the work of a madman.
But isn’t it odd that this genius new way to help keep the furriners out is on the wish list of one Donald John Trump, considering the manner in which he himself uses social media?
Because if you were a customs man in any other nation that had developed such a requirement for admission — presumably that what a wannabe visitor had posted on their socials was safe and sane, not full of lunatic ravings — Donald John Trump would simply not be welcome there. Because pictures of the grandchildren on the FB page is not the kind of online currency out current president trades in.
As in the other evening, when Trump posted over 160 times to Truth Social between 7 p.m. and midnight, including reposting from the truly dangerous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he of the cruel denialism about the Sandy Hook shootings, a video headlined “Michelle Obama May Have Used Biden’s Autopen in the Final Days of His Disastrous Administration to Pardon Key Individuals.” Is that so? Well, no.
Then he casually attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar as “a terrorist from a terrorist family” and reposted his desire to hang six other lawmakers because they are “a threat to America.”
Mr. Customs Man, you would not have to wade any deeper into the weeds of the social media profile of Donald John Trump than the content produced the night of Dec. 1, 2025 to decide that here was a visa applicant with a flair for both the crazy and the violent and so not welcome in your country. Next!
“Will admission to the U.S.A. be predicated on being nice about the president?” Jemimah Steinfeld, chief executive of Index on Censorship in London, asked the Guardian. “That would be censorship pure and simple and the result will extend far beyond as people start to self-censor to keep the door to the U.S.A. open to them.”
The Big Brother Watch group called the plan “the latest evidence of the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for shredding civil liberties in the name of border control and national security.”
Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch called it “an outrageous demand that violates fundamental free speech and free expression rights,” according to Politico.
You know what I call it? A really good reason to short American hotel and airline stocks.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.
