President Donald Trump’s revised immigration travel ban still is not resonating in Silicon Valley’s CEOs who rely on tech workers from Iran and other countries to keep their business afloat.
Several tech executives spoke out Monday against the president’s new executive order imposing a 90-day ban on issuing new visas to immigrants from six majority Muslim countries: Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and Libya. Iraq has been removed in the new ban, CNET reported.
The order will also suspend the US refugee program for all countries for 120 days, which includes minority applications this time around.
More than 100 companies opposed the original ban six weeks ago, including tech giants Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. The ban was temporarily halted by a judge in Seattle and was not reinstated by a federal appeals court in San Francisco nearly a month ago. The decision was seen as a win for the tech industry.
Several tech startup executives had taken to Twitter late Monday night and early Tuesday morning to protest the new executive action.
CEO of Salesforce Marc Benioff tweeted about his grandfather who arrived to the US as a “refugee.” Without him, Benioff wrote, there would be “no Salesforce.”
Meanwhile the embattled ride-hailing service Uber said in a statement that “Our sentiment has not changed: President Trump’s immigration ban is unjust and wrong. We will continue to stand up for those in the Uber community affected.”
Uber’s biggest US competitor Lyft also took to social media to deride the president. Logan Green, Lyft’s CEO said, “We will continue to speak out and take action.” Green said the company plans on meeting with the American Civil Liberties Union later this week. The ACLU said it intends to “keep fighting” the order in court.
Airbnb’s co-founder and CEO, tweeted: “Barring people from entering our country because of where they’re from was wrong the first time around - still wrong...”
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