Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has formally proposed adding five years of social media history as a “mandatory data element” for travelers coming to the United States from 42 countries considered among the safest. The plan, first reported by The New York Times, was filed on Wednesday and marks a significant expansion of what visitors will be required to share before entering the country.
The proposal also calls for a far deeper look into a traveler’s digital and personal footprint. Applicants would need to list every phone number they’ve used in the past five years and all email addresses from the past decade.
CBP is also seeking IP addresses, metadata from any photos submitted online, and a range of biometric identifiers such as facial scans, fingerprints, DNA and iris data. On top of that, visitors would have to share details about close family members, including their names, contact information, birth dates, birthplaces and where they currently live.
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It’s still unclear whether this expanded screening could have any effect on the surge of international visitors expected for next year’s FIFA World Cup. For now, there’s no indication that the new rules would slow down travel, but the questions around tighter vetting arrive at a sensitive moment, with the U.S. preparing to host one of the world’s biggest sporting events.
FIFA projects that the tournament will generate about $30.5 billion in economic activity and support roughly 185,000 jobs across the country, making smooth entry for foreign fans a major priority.
Those projections, however, rely on the expectation that about 2.6 million of the people coming for the tournament will be traveling from outside the country. Tourism officials in Philadelphia and Kansas City, both host cities told Forbes that FIFA has urged them to plan for an even split between U.S. travelers and international fans. That balance is a key part of the economic outlook, which is why any uncertainty around new screening rules is getting close attention from local planners.
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Even before the new CBP proposal, projections for international attendance at the World Cup were already lower than FIFA’s estimates. Tourism Economics, part of Oxford Economics, predicted that only around 1.24 million foreign fans would travel to the U.S., less than half of what FIFA anticipates.
A separate analysis by the World Travel & Tourism Council, which looked at tourism’s economic impact across 184 countries, found that the U.S. was the only nation expected to see a drop-in spending by international visitors in 2025, highlighting potential challenges for the country’s tourism outlook.
Tourism Economics anticipates that the World Cup could help offset the steep 6.3% drop in inbound international travel that the U.S. has seen since the Trump administration, a decline largely linked to tariffs, “America First” policies, and stricter immigration rules. Even before the CBP’s new proposal, the firm projected a 3.7% rebound in foreign visitors next year, with roughly a third of that increase expected to come directly from World Cup-related travel.