President Donald Trump’s immigration order sparked an outcry from some of the world’s largest tech firms Saturday, with Alphabet’s Google ordering its overseas staff back home immediately and executives from other companies either lambasting the directive or reassuring their international staffers.
Silicon Valley’s swift response came in the hours before a federal judge issued a stay of deportations.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees that the tech firm reached out to the White House to express how the order will negatively affect Apple’s workforce and made it clear that the company believes in the importance of immigration.
“I’ve heard from many of you who are deeply concerned about the executive order issued (Friday) restricting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. I share your concerns. It is not a policy we support,” Cook said in an email obtained by this newspaper.
“Apple would not exist without immigration, let alone thrive and innovate the way we do,” he wrote.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a memo to employees: “It’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues,” according to Bloomberg News. “We’ve always made our view on immigration issues known publicly and will continue to do so.”
The remarks by Cook, Pichai and other tech moguls highlight the latest clash between the president and Silicon Valley tech firms that rely heavily on an immigrant workforce. Many tech executives have been relatively silent since Trump became president, but have spoken out either privately or publicly since he signed the immigration order Friday.
The order bars all refugees from entering the United States for 120 days and blocks the acceptance of Syrian refugees indefinitely. The order also blocked citizens of Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, which are predominately Muslim countries, from entering the United States for 90 days.
The president said he signed the order as part of an effort to keep out “radical Islamic terrorists,” and later denied it was a Muslim ban.
But Bay Area tech companies disagreed it would make the country safer.
Google told employees that more than 100 company staffers are affected by the order. These workers were told to get back to the United States before the order took effect.
“We’re concerned about the impact of this order and any proposals that could impose restrictions on Googlers and their families, or that could create barriers to bringing great talent to the U.S. We’ll continue to make our views on these issues known to leaders in Washington and elsewhere,” Google said in a statement to this newspaper.
Social media giant Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke out against the order Friday, noting that the issue was a personal one for him. The parents of his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, are Chinese-Vietnamese refugees and his great-grandparents were also immigrants.
On Saturday, a company spokeswoman said that Facebook is currently assessing the impact of the order on its workforce and trying to determine how to best protect them and their families.
Microsoft, which owns business-oriented social network LinkedIn, told its employees that it will be providing legal assistance and advice to tech workers affected by the order.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, said in an email to the company’s workforce that there are currently 76 U.S. visa holders within the tech firm who are citizens of the seven countries mentioned in the order.
“As an immigrant and as a CEO, I’ve both experienced and seen the positive impact that immigration has on our company, for the country, and for the world,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, who posted Smith’s email to employees on LinkedIn.
Chief executives from Netflix, Twitter and other Bay Area tech firms also expressed their concerns on social media.
Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who faced criticism after he said ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson might make an “excellent” secretary of state, raised concerns about the executive order. Musk is one of only a few tech executives on Trump’s business advisory team and manufacturing jobs initiative.
“The blanket entry ban on citizens from certain primarily Muslim countries is not the best way to address the country’s challenges,” he tweeted on Saturday. “Many people negatively affected by this policy are strong supporters of the US. They’ve done right, not wrong & don’t deserve to be rejected.”
Tesla has a small number of employees who are potentially affected by the executive order and the human resource and legal teams are working directly with them to provide assistance or answer questions. The company isn’t aware of any employees who have been detained at an airport.
Protests at San Francisco International Airport also attracted Google co-founder Sergey Brin. And Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky tweeted that the company is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the United States.
Google cofounder Sergey Brin at SFO protest: "I'm here because I'm a refugee." (Photo from Matt Kang/Forbes) pic.twitter.com/GwhsSwDPLT
— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@RMac18) January 29, 2017
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey called the impact of the order “real and upsetting,” and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings called the actions “so un-American it pains us all” in a Facebook post.
“It is time to link arms together to protect American values of freedom and opportunity,” Hastings wrote.
Bay Area News Group wire services contributed to this report.
