India, Dec. 15 -- The US's new regime of expanded vetting of H-1B came into force from Monday. "Online presence review" may sound innocuous at first instance, but it is Orwellian in every sense. The new vetting norms require every applicant (and their dependents) to adjust the settings of their social media profiles to "public", so that the US State department builds profiles of them based on their online posts preceding the date of application. Similar vetting norms have also been proposed for tourist visa applications.

The US State department says in no uncertain terms that every visa adjudication is a matter of national security, and it will use "all available information" to identify applicants who are "inadmissible to the United Sta...