Silicon Valley Execs Denounce Trump's Refugee Ban

SILICON VALLEY, CA — Executives with a number of Silicon Valley companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook and Uber are denouncing the Trump administration's recent order temporarily barring those from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

Silicon Valley companies have long depended on contributions to their success by workers from across the globe, and leaders with those same companies have expressed their disappointment and disapproval of a President Trump's Jan. 28 executive order placing a 90-day ban on entrance into the U.S. by citizens and refugees from seven countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The order was later amended to allow permanent residents with green cards to reenter the country.

After the initial ban, reaction from some was swift. On Friday, not long after Trump's executive order was issued, the CEO of Mountain View-based Google, Sundar Pichai, sent a memo to all employees raising his concerns and revealing that more than 100 Google staff were directly affected.

Then on Saturday, he made his position clear in re-tweeting a link to a Wall Street Journal article.

Also on the day of the order, Tim Cook, chief executive of Cupertino-based Apple, told staff the order was “not a policy we support," while Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg posted an open letter on the social media platform he created, stating that America should be proud to be a nation of immigrants.

"We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat," he wrote. Expanding the focus of law enforcement beyond people who are real threats would make all Americans less safe by diverting resources, while millions of undocumented folks who don't pose a threat will live in fear of deportation."

The day after the order, Travis Kalanick, head of San Francisco-based Uber, created a Facebook post where he said he realized that the ban would affect many innocent people and that he would address the issue with Trump this Friday, Feb. 3, during the first meeting of a business advisory council that Trump has named Kalanick to.

Also on Facebook, Reed Hastings, the CEO of Los Gatos-based Netflix, wrote that Trump's actions were un-American and would make the country less safe, not safer.

"It is time to link arms together to protect (the) American values of freedom and opportunity," he wrote.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin briefly joined protesters at San Francisco International Airport, as did Sam Altman, who runs Y Combinator, a Mountain View-based program that helps new tech startups.

Altman also wrote a blog post urging tech leaders to take a stand against the immigration order.

"At a minimum, companies should take a public stance. But talking is only somewhat effective, and employees should push their companies to figure out what actions they can take," he wrote.

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