She wishes to continue helping others pursue opportunities, whether temporary or permanent, for their career or residence in the United States. Ashley’s passion for immigration stems from her personal background as a child of an immigrant. Consulates and Embassies around the world. Citizenship and Immigration Services and navigate Consular Processing with U.S. She helped these clients prepare filings with the U.S. Prior to joining Green and Spiegel, Ashley worked as a Law Clerk for three years assisting multinational and domestic corporations, as well as individuals, from several industries including Information Technology, Academia, Business, Transport, and Health.
She has prepared complex responses to Requests for Evidence, particularly related to H-1B, L, and I-140 filings, covering specialty occupation, right to control, maintenance of status, ability to pay and more. Ashley has an array of experience with nonimmigrant and immigrant employment-based cases, marriage and family-based cases, and naturalization applications. The immigration authorities are increasingly relying on social media as a method for conducting low-level background checks and testing the veracity of statements provided to immigration officers.Īdditional information regarding the new social media identifier requirements can be found here.Ashley Hogan is an Associate Attorney in the Firm’s Philadelphia Office.
The above changes to the Form DS-160 and Form DS-260 only applies to visa applicants, and does not apply to individuals traveling under the Visa Waiver Program. In addition to requesting applicants’ social media identifiers, the US Department of State is also asking applicants to provide five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, international travel and deportation status, as well as whether any family members have been involved in terrorist activities. Consular Officers will not ask applicants to provide the passwords to their social media accounts, and will not have the ability to modify privacy controls visa applicants may have implemented on their accounts.
It is important to note that the US Department of State IS NOT asking applicants to provide the passwords to their social media accounts. Anyone filing an immigrant visa application as of this date must complete the electronic DS-260 Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration and DS-261 Choice of Address or Agent online instead of filing the paper DS-230 Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration (Parts I and II) and DS-3032 Choice of Address and Agent. An example of the drop-down menu from online visa application form can be seen below:
Check out our step-by-step instructions for completing the form to speed up the process and to avoid mistakes. The updated visa application forms currently employ a drop-down menu which list the specific social media platforms for which identifiers are being requested. Completing The DS-260 Application Form for DV Lottery Winners For those who have won the Green Card DV Lottery, submitting the DS-260 form is the first thing to do after winning.
This update was announced in a statement to the press by a US Department of State official on June 1, 2019.Ī social media “handle” or “identifier” is any name used by the individual on social media platforms including, but not limited to, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Applicants for US visas are now being asked to provide all social media identifiers they have used within the past five (5) years. On May 31, 2019, the US Department of State updated their Form DS-160 (online nonimmigrant visa application) and Form DS-260 (online immigrant visa application) to collect social media identifiers for those applying for nonimmigrant and immigrant visas.