17 Brooklyn Tech Leaders Sign Letter Against Trump 'Muslim Ban'

BROOKLYN, NY — Over a dozen tech company leaders in Brooklyn have signed a letter by organization Tech:NYC to Donald Trump criticizing his executive order banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim nations. The letter gathered signatures form hundreds of CEOs, company founders and investors from all over NYC, and among them are at least 17 Brooklyn tech leaders from companies like Kickstarter, Etsy and Gimlet Media.

The letter argued, among moral issues with the immigration ban, that refusing to let immigrants in to America would cause the tech industry suffer greatly.

"Immigrants are more than twice as likely to start a business as the native-born population. Immigrant entrepreneurs started, in whole or in part, some of the most important technology companies of our time including LinkedIn, Tesla Motors, Zipcar, Google, Intel, Yahoo!, eBay, and WhatsApp. More than half of the companies on the current list of U.S. technology startups valued at $1 billion or more were started by immigrants," the letter says.

"We should be doing everything in our power to attract these entrepreneurs to the United States. Yet when we close the door to immigrants from certain countries, not to mention to refugees, we are telling all immigrants that they are not welcome here."

Startup leaders in Brooklyn who signed the letter include CEOs and partners of Electric Objects, Fatherly, Kinvolved, Tinybop, Gimlet Media, Common, Alloy, Livestream, NYC Media Lab, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Kickstarter, Notation Capital, Mediachain Labs, CARTO, Etsy and Agrilyst.

A non-partisan study from the National Foundation for American Policy published in 2016 found that immigrants started more than half of the U.S.-based startups that were valued at $1 billion or more. Those immigrant-founded companies employed an average of about 760 people per company in the U.S., the study found.

H/t Technical.ly Brooklyn

Lead photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC by 3.0