Iranian nationals are posing as MAGA-loving Twitter trolls an attempt to sow fear and spread hatred about Indian immigrants living in the US, a report says.
“Indian ppl are stealing American graduates jobs,” wrote one of the faux Trump supporters in a tweet last month.
“Indians are doing their best to keep the silence!” another person said, using the Twitter handle @TedMaga. “Wake up USA!”
An investigation conducted by The Daily Caller found numerous usernames and posts similar to these, which were all linked to the Iranian campaign against Indian immigrants.
Using Twitter and various chat groups, the Iranian nationals have been working feverishly to defeat a recent amendment to the 2019 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill — allowing the per-country cap on employment-based green cards to be lifted.
The amendment is reportedly based on a previously introduced bill, known as H.R. 392, which had bipartisan support.
Since the backlog of Indian workers waiting for green cards is notoriously large, the Iranians are worried that they’d be forced to wait several years for theirs, should the new amendment go through.
They’ve been changing their names and online personas over the past two months in order to trick social media users into thinking they are Americans, the Daily Caller reports.
One person, for instance, went from “Ali A” on Twitter to “Allison” — and another from “Hossein” to “Hudson,” according to the website.
“Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!” tweeted Amanda Blake, who goes by Maryam on the messaging app Telegram.
“Indians take them all with this new bill,” she said in a tweet dated July 29. “Nice! Nice! Nice! #NoHR392 #RemoveHR392.”
The Daily Caller managed to infiltrate Iranian chat groups using Telegram and reportedly uncovered the online campaign this month. They spoke to an administrator named “Nazbanoo” — who admitted to pushing the anti-Indian agenda, but claimed it was out of frustration and not personal hate.
“I personally love my Indian friends and I don’t see other Iranians dislike them,” Nazbanoo explained.
“Their culture is so close to our culture. We are like each other,” she said. “There is no reason we dislike them … We first were tweeting by our own names but then they started belittling us because of [Trump’s] travel ban so some people started hiding themselves under the name of Americans.”
Nazbanoo said everything changed once Indian users “started saying these things against us” and accused Iranians of being the only ones who “opposed this bill.”
“You know we really didn’t want fight,” she added. “We just wanted to say our points.”
Despite her claims, the anti-immigrant rhetoric has been enough to turn heads.
“Do you want Indian guys to give your children an exam?” wrote one faux MAGA-lover in a recent group chat.
“#HR392 is gonna impact your life disastrously!” another warned on Twitter, using the name “Sammuel Davis.”
“Indians have found a sneaky way to replace US graduates and disrupt our job market with cheap workforce and hide their agenda under a ‘fairness’ propaganda,” he said.
Many of the accounts have been adorned with images of the American flag and other iconic symbols, such as the Statue of Liberty.
One Twitter user — posing as “Albert Pickens” — has been tweeting out the hashtags “#IndiaFirst” and “#MakeAmericaIndia,” while also retweeting hateful messages about Indian immigrants.
“President Trump – The India mafia is walking all over Americans in their own country,” read one post that Pickens retweeted. “Its only gotten worse yr by yr – Need strong measures to stop this!”
Some of the Iranians have also been sending letters and messages to senators, and even the president, himself.
“We really do not have voice,” Nazbanoo said. “We just tweet every day in hope some more people get aware of this bill … But after all, we are not American and Americans are those who finally decide about future of their country. We hope they know about this bill and then with enough information they decide. Then we obey whatever they want because this is their country.”
