Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Silicon Valley stands up against travel ban
SAN FRANCISCO — Through a Super Bowl ad, public statements and court filings, Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are taking a strong stand against President Donald Trump’s travel ban, saying high tech needs immigrants’ creativity and energy to stay competitive.
Although the companies are risking a backlash from customers who side with Trump, they say the pushback is necessary for an industry dependent on thousands of highly skilled foreign workers.
About 58 percent of the engineers and other highskill employees in Silicon Valley were born outside the U.S., according to the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, an industry trade group.
“Immigration and innovation go hand in hand,” said Carl Guardino, the group’s CEO. “This cuts so deeply into the bone and marrow of what fuels the innovation economy that very few CEOs feel the luxury of sitting on the sidelines. So people are going to stand up and speak up.”
The tech industry contends there aren’t enough Americans with the specialized skills these companies need. The ban, tech companies say, would make hiring even tougher and pressure them to move some operations abroad.
“A lot of these companies will really struggle if all of a sudden we turn off the spigot,” said Greg Morrisett, dean of Cornell University’s Computing and Information Science school.
In a court filing Sunday against the ban, 97 companies, including such major tech players as Google, Apple, Microsoft, eBay, Netflix, Facebook and Twitter, also spoke of the entrepreneurial spirit of “people who choose to leave everything that is familiar and journey to an unknown land to make a new life.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella both came from India.
In signing an executive order Jan. 27 that would temporarily ban people from seven Muslim-majority countries, Trump said he was trying to protect Americans by preventing terrorists from slipping into the country.
The administration says the president has the constitutional authority to decide who can enter.
During the Super Bowl, several companies ran ads that promoted diversity and inclusion, as marketers tried to reach both sides of a consumer base roiled by the election.
Airbnb followed up with a campaign to provide short-term housing over the next five years for 100,000 people in need, starting with refugees, disaster survivors and relief workers.
The company also said it will donate $4 million over four years to the International Rescue Committee, joining many tech brethren in making financial contributions.
Google set up a $4 million “crisis fund” in January to support organizations that are helping immigrants and refugees, while ride-hailing service Lyft pledged $1 million over the next four years to the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups challenging the ban.