Anti Indian anti H1B movie script
By Bala Shah

US-based Indian origin Tech firm Apex Technology Group had initiated legal action against American blogs EndH1B, Itgrunt and Guestworkerfraud. Apex, which counts IBM, Microsoft, UBS and other blue chip companies as clients, wanted to protect its reputation after EndH1B published a post accusing it allegedly of mistreating Indians on H1B Visas.

Among all these anti H1B sites, ITGrunt’s Tunnel Rat is the most vociferous.  His anonymity and clever turn of phrase ensured he was even interviewed by international magazine BusinessWeek. Till today, no one is sure who Tunnel Rat is. 

Apex Technology Group has flatly denied all allegations made against it. At this point in time none of the allegations have been proved in court.

What Apex wanted was to use its lawyers to get all articles criticizing it removed from EndH1B, Itgrunt and Guestworkerfraud. But they landed up requesting the New Jersey based American Court to remove the 3 websites from the internet.  On Dec 23, 2009 the Judge, instead of asking for only anti Apex articles to be removed, banned the 3 websites. Banned as in ejected from the internet.

While Techgoss was the first Indian site to report this news, soon American national media picked up the story.  International sites like New York Times, Slashdot, Computerworld, Techdirt, Arstechnica and others picked up the story.  While many journalists and Americans did not agree with some of the anti Indian views expressed by EndH1B and ITGrunt, most felt that banning them was not only unjustified but it may have even been illegal under the American constitution.  America's most powerful and respected digital rights organizations EFF made a public statement that it was illegal to ban Tunnel Rat's websites. With such international media coverage, Tunnel Rat developed a national profile.

Now Tunnel Rat is publishing a movie script in his blog which seems to be partly autobiographical. But like many Hollywood and Bollywood films, the movie script uses its artistic license to present Tunnel Rat as the war veteran and all American hero fighting the Indian H1B mafia in USA. Tunnel Rat’s script describes how a handful of evil Indian techies messed up his credit card, threatened him on the phone and even turned up menacingly outside his house.  Tunnel Rat was even forced to buy a guy to protect himself from thuggish Indians. 

In at least two places, Tunnel Rat’s movie script fulfils every techie’s fantasy when his new girl friend ‘kisses him all over’ and more.

In this movie script, the US-based Indians on H1B Visas are working on a financial system which would eventually bring down the US sub prime market and consequentially the American economy.

Like most Indians, I feel that Tunnel Rat’s anti Indian views sometimes border on the ridiculous. And his anti desi venom has lost him many American supporters.  But to his credit, Tunnel Rat has single handedly managed to highlight a lot of the H1B abuse by a few desi body shops.  And he does write well.

Will Tunnel Rat expose and destroy his enemies?  Will the Indian mafia subdue Tunnel Rat?  Will India’s Bollywood pirate Tunnel Rat’s script and write him out and replace him with an Indian hero fighting Pakistani techies on H1B Visas?  Check out the already published and forthcoming installments of the movie script on his blog.