Act I: The Notification

The alerts hit Kathmandu and Dhaka within 24 hours of each other—twin seismic pulses in the geopolitical nervous system. First, Nepal: "Effective immediately, all applicants for F, M, or J visas must set social media accounts to PUBLIC." Then Bangladesh: identical language, identical demand. No velvet gloves, no diplomatic sugarcoating. Just the sterile click of a bureaucratic mouse that echoed like a vault sealing shut.

In the monsoon-drenched lanes of Dhaka, medical student Arifa Rahman (not her real name) stared at her phone. "They want my family WhatsApp jokes? My cousin’s wedding photos?" In Kathmandu, engineering aspirant Bikram Joshi (not his real name) scrolled through years of Tibetan solidarity posts. Both knew: this wasn’t vetting. This was digital strip-search under open skies.

Act II: The Algorithmic Raj

Let’s name this plainly: 21st-century imperialism wears algorithmic robes. When the U.S. State Department orders South Asian students to bare their digital souls, while exempting German or Japanese applicants, it resurrects the colonial "natives vs. Europeans" divide. The platforms enabling this? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—Western digital fiefdoms born from Pentagon partnerships and Silicon Valley venture capital. As CIGI scholars note, these are not neutral tools but "geo-economic weapons" where "winner takes all".

"Every visa adjudication is a national security decision," declares the Kathmandu embassy notice. Translation: Your dreams are now contingent on your Instagram likes.

This is connectivity weaponised. This is America deploying platform architecture itself. The brilliance? Forcing self-colonisation. Students now scrub profiles preemptively—deleting Kashmir solidarity posts, hiding climate activism, burying critiques of U.S. drone strikes. The chilling effect is the feature, not the bug.

Act III: The Multipolar Counterpoint

Enter the subplot: A world rebalancing. As American soft power wanes, alternatives surge. Germany reports a 58% spike in South Asian students; Finland waives social media checks entirely. Meanwhile, Dhaka negotiates digital partnerships with Delhi—India’s UPI payment system now processes cross-border education fees in seconds .

The irony? The U.S. condemns China’s "social credit system" while implementing behavioural vetting via visa forms. Yet as Carnegie scholars note, the Global South increasingly rejects this hypocrisy: "The central divide remains between the dominant North and the aggrieved South".

Act IV: Resistance in Minor Key

How to fight back? Nepal’s Foreign Ministry quietly circulates a draft note: "Reciprocity demanded: U.S. applicants must publish tax returns and gun ownership records." Bangladeshi hackers launch #EncryptTheSouth tutorials—teaching students to archive "private" profile versions before compliance.

Scholars at Dhaka University trace the policy’s lineage: from British colonial"Thuggee Files" to Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Their weapon? Dark humour. Memes flood Telegram: "My ancestors gave spices to colonisers. Now I give Zuckerberg my DMs."

Finale: The Unsilenced South

This isn’t just about visas. It’s about whose digital bodies are deemed legible, harvestable, disposable. When Arifa toggles her profile to "public," she hears echoes of her grandmother’s stories: "The British measured our skulls to prove inferiority." Today’s metrics are likes and network graphs.

Yet the revolt is subtle. Students create decoy accounts—carefully curated performances of apolitical banality. Others flood feeds with Tagore poetry or Bhutanese throat-singing videos, encrypting dissent in cultural noise. As one Kathmandu tweet goes viral: "You want my data? Here’s a sonnet."

Epilogue

The embassies framed this as "security." But in the bazaars of Dhaka and the cybercafes of Kathmandu, they know the truth: data is the new spice, silicon the new soil. As the post-American world stirs, South Asia’s response blends poetic defiance with technological pragmatism—a digital satyagraha unfolding one privacy setting at a time.

*Zakir Kibria is a writer and nicotine fugitive. Entrepreneur |Policy Analyst|Chronicler of Entropy | Cognitive Dissident. “Empires decay. Pragmatism survives. Stay sarcastic.” Email: zk@krishikaaj.com

Originally published by The Daily Star (Bangladesh) at: [Full Link: https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/views/news/the-digital-strip-search-how-americas-visa-edicts-redraw-colonial-borders-cyberspace-3936496]. Republished in New Spotlight Magazine with permission. The views expressed in the journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the New Spotlight.

References

1. Kathmandu Post. (2025). US Embassy in Nepal asks student visa applicants to make social media accounts public
2. Dhaka Tribune. (2025). US Embassy urges student visa applicants to make social media accounts public
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