Microsoft and nearly 100 other tech companies — ranging from Google and Facebook to Apple and Twitter — have filed an amicus brief (via The Verge) expressing opposition to the Trump administration's recent executive order on immigration. Along with arguing that the executive order is unlawful, the brief also places an emphasis on the many contributions immigrants make to American society, and how the travel ban will ultimately hurt businesses.
From the brief:
Immigrants make many of the Nation's greatest discoveries, and create some of the country's most innovative and iconic companies. America has long recognized the importance of protecting ourselves against those who would do us harm. But it has done so while maintaining our fundamental commitment to welcoming immigrants—through increased background checks and other controls on people seeking to enter our country.The tremendous impact of immigrants on America—and on American business—is not happenstance. People who choose to leave everything that is familiar and journey to an unknown land to make a new life necessarily are endowed with drive, creativity, determination—and just plain guts. The energy they bring to America is a key reason why the American economy has been the greatest engine of prosperity and innovation in history.The Executive Order abandons those principles—and inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth as a result. The Order makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world's best employees. It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies' ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States.
The travel ban has been contentious to say the least, and Microsoft has expressed its opposition on multiple occasions thus far. Just last week, Microsoft also sent a letter to the Trump administration asking for exceptions for some 76 of its employees and their families who are negatively impacted by the executive order.
The executive order itself, it is seeing strong legal opposition, particularly in Washington state. A federal judge in Seattle was even responsible for a recent temporary block on the ban.
If you're curious, here's a look at all of the companies that have signed on to the brief:
- AdRoll
- Aeris Communications
- Airbnb
- AltSchool
- Ancestry.com
- Appboy
- Apple
- AppNexus
- Asana
- Atlassian
- Autodesk
- Automattic
- Box
- Brightcove
- Brit + Co
- CareZone
- Castlight Health
- Checkr
- Chobani
- Citrix Systems
- Cloudera
- Cloudflare
- Copia Institute
- DocuSign
- DoorDash
- Dropbox
- Dynatrace
- eBay
- Engine Advocacy
- Etsy
- Fastly
- Foursquare
- Fuze
- General Assembly
- GitHub
- Glassdoor
- GoPro
- Harmonic
- Hipmunk
- Indigogo
- Intel
- JAND d/b/a Warby Parker
- Kargo
- Kickstarter
- KIND
- Knotel
- Levi Strauss & Co.
- Lithium Technologies
- Lyft
- Mapbox
- Maplebear d/b/a Instacart
- Marin Software
- Medallia
- Medium
- Meetup
- Microsoft
- Motivate International
- Mozilla
- Netflix
- Netgear
- NewsCred
- Patreon
- PayPal
- Quora
- Rocket Fuel
- SaaStr
- Salesforce
- Scopely
- Shutterstock
- Snap
- Spokeo
- Spotify
- Square
- Squarespace
- Strava
- Stripe
- SurveyMonkey
- TaskRabbit
- Tech:NYC
- Thumbtack
- Turn
- Twilio
- Turn
- Uber
- Via
- Wikimedia Foundation
- Workday
- Y Combinator
- Yelp
- Zynga
