From the San Jose Mercury-News:

H-1B: BART reluctantly allows group to paper stations, trains with ads attacking visa

By ETHAN BARON | [email protected] | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: March 17, 2018 at 6:30 am

A group opposed to U.S. immigration policies has papered Bay Area BART stations and trains with hundreds of ads critical of the H-1B visa program, targeting their message at local tech workers.

“Your companies think you are expensive, undeserving & expendable,” say the ads, paid for by Progressives for Immigration Reform. “Congress, fix H-1B law so companies must seek & hire U.S. workers!” …

BART said that Progressives for Immigration Reform spent $80,000 on the ad campaign, which is to run through mid-April. The group bought more than 250 panel ads and 100 smaller in-train ads, which will be seen on both sides of the Bay, a BART spokesperson said.

“BART does not endorse these ads,” the transportation agency said in a statement. “BART is a safe and welcoming system for all people.”

It’s almost as if the (literally) Richest Men in the History of the World had propagandized the conventional wisdom into assuming that their special interest immigration loophole didn’t exist to make them richer, it existed as a desperate last-ditch defense against the Silicon Valley Ku Klux Klan nightriders galloping through the BART stations.

But the messaging complies with free speech laws, the agency said.

“BART must post these ads to comply with the law,” the agency said. “Court rulings reinforce the fact that we can’t deny the ads.”

One man at San Francisco’s Civic Center BART station said the ads appeared designed to fuel animosity between U.S. and foreign workers. “It seems misplaced and it seems like it’s probably going to be ineffective and it seems like the purpose of it is to get people mad,” said the man, who declined to be identified because he said he is in the U.S. on a work visa and authorities announced in September they were expanding monitoring of non-citizens. “Most of the people I know in San Francisco are incredibly pro-immigration.”

Kevin Lynn, executive director of Progressives for Information Reform, said the goal of the ad campaign is to call attention to abuses in the H-1B program that disadvantage workers in science, technology, math and engineering fields.

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