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While vacationing in India, engineer Amrutha Tamanam hurried to fly back to the U.S. after Donald Trump suddenly announced a $100,000 fee for her type of visa. As she scrambled to rebook her flight, online groups with racist motives coordinated efforts to overload booking systems from India, naming their campaign “clog the toilet.” The White House later clarified that the new H-1B fee was a one-time charge and did not apply to existing visa holders. Nevertheless, major U.S. companies had already instructed their employees abroad to return quickly to avoid the fee or risk being stuck overseas. Tamanam, based in Austin, began looking for flights from Vijayawada as users on a far-right message board, 4chan, attempted to overwhelm airline reservation systems to block Indian visa holders from booking flights. One thread advised users to find flights from India to the U.S., start the checkout process but not finalize the purchase, aiming to flood the system and prevent visa holders from reaching the U.S. before the new fee took effect. This campaign likely contributed to Tamanam’s repeated website crashes, with booking pages timing out much faster than usual. After multiple tries, she successfully rebooked a one-way ticket to Dallas on Qatar Airways, paying about $2,000—more than twice her original round-trip fare. “It was very difficult to book a ticket, and I paid a hefty price due to all the panic,” she told AFP. The thread, also circulating on Telegram and fringe forums favored by Trump supporters, urged: “Want to keep them in India? Clog the flight reservation system!” It prompted users to reserve seats on popular India-U.S. routes without completing payments, blocking availability and driving up prices. One user claimed to have secured 100 seats, while others reported holding up seats on Air India’s website. However, an Air India spokesperson said their system encountered no issues. Although it’s hard to gauge the campaign’s full impact, experts consider it an attempt to cause panic among H-1B visa holders. Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, noted that 4chan’s ability to radicalize individuals into extremist beliefs is concerning, as several US mass shooters have published manifestos there. H-1B visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialized skills like scientists and programmers, initially for three years with extensions up to six. The U.S. grants around 85,000 H-1B visas annually through a lottery system, with India accounting for roughly 75% of recipients. In today’s info-warfare environment, this troll operation exemplifies how malicious actors can launch disruptive attacks with just a few keystrokes, according to Brian Levin of the Centre for the Study of Hate and Extremism. As nationalist politics spread worldwide, opponents may increasingly turn to aggressive online tactics—highlighting how swiftly these efforts can spread across borders, fueled by shared animosity online.
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