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Recently, the thought of the H1B visa is being extremely scrutinized in the public square of the world's most sparkling IT hub.
Anti-H1B posters have been put in famous Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART) train stations, which travel through the centre of San Francisco Bay Area. The posters will remain there for no less than an entire month in the midst of the new H1B filing season which opens 2 April through an advertisement campaign worth of $80,000.
BART is one of the busiest rapid transport systems in the US with an average of around 425,000 everyday passengers and approximately 124 million yearly passengers in the 2017 financial year. As per Bay Area newspapers, at least three stations — Civic Centre, Oakland's 12th Street and 19th Street are marquee locations.
Sponsored by Progressives for Immigration Reform, this anti H1B advertisement campaign is setting off the fumes among the sentiments of anti-immigrants that put Trump into the White House. Twitter
Addressing "US tech workers", the ad says, "Your companies think you are expensive, undeserving & expendable. Congress, fix H-1B law so companies must seek & hire US workers!"
"I’ve lived here for 10 years. I’ve never seen so much anger against us. Remember, this is not a dark alley, it’s an essential public transport system. Thousands of people are going to be seeing these posters. Imagine the possible consequences…", said Bharati, an H-1B worker of Bay Area who thinks she feels "lucky" she can drive to work rather than taking a BART train with these ads put all over the place.
A Settle resident, Jansi Kumar, says the BART poster story is flying high on social media such as WhatsApp groups. "People are really scared, it is unnerving," she says.
The $80,000 ad buy includes around "250 panel ads and 100 smaller in-train ads, which will be seen on both sides of the Bay," according to the reports of Mercury News.
BART riders and techies in the city are responding with hatred and jolt on Twitter.
Awful, anti-immigrant ads in the BART station today. Where can I donate to support the exact opposite of this? pic.twitter.com/24x23OmV8S
— Don McCurdy (@donrmccurdy) March 16, 2018
Karin Spirn wrote, “BART is supposed to be for everyone!!! How will immigrants feel when they see these disgusting advertisements on their commute?”
In that highly circulating advertisement campaign, the two names, Progressives for Immigration Reform and ustechworkers.com are evidently noticeable. Led by Stephen Miller, Progressives for Immigration Reform’s slogan supports the strategies of Trump's immigration policy. The advertisement is planned to be in the accord with H-1B filing season that opens 2 April, soon after Easter weekend in the US.
It is important to observe, how an advertisement campaign is getting so much attention in train stations of California because campaigns like these are reasonably easy to repeat and incite an exponential fashion because of the location where millions of people must travel each day. On the other hand, if cash flow is not a concern for lobbyists, then each Indian stronghold in America is a potential target for this hate campaign in a crucial election year. Repeatedly, leaders of Silicon Valley have hard-pressed in opposition to anti-H1B policy. However, this time, it's not policy but, it's a hard punch via railroad.
Source: TechGIG
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