TechDigits

Tech news
Thursday, Apr 25, 2024

As Trump Expands His Travel Ban, Amazon, Apple And Google Are Silent

As Trump Expands His Travel Ban, Amazon, Apple And Google Are Silent

In January 2017, when the Trump administration first unveiled a travel ban targeting seven majority Muslim countries, the tech industry took up arms. This time around there's mainly been silence.

In January 2017, when the Trump administration first unveiled a travel ban targeting seven majority Muslim countries, the tech industry took up arms. CEOs wrote impassioned letters, a billionaire founder showed up to an airport protest, and multiple companies lent their voices to lawsuits challenging the policy.

Last week, however, following the announcement of immigration restrictions on six additional countries, the reaction could not have been more different. Silicon Valley largely fell silent.

On Friday, the Trump administration said it would be barring immigrant visas for individuals from Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, and Eritrea, while also suspending diversity visas -which grant green cards to people from countries with low levels of immigration to the US -for Sudan and Tanzania. The changes, which go into effect on Feb. 22, are expected to affect as many as 12,400 visa applicants and were put in place because the countries failed to meet minimal security and information-sharing standards, according to officials.

As the tech industry has warmed to the Trump administration -with CEOs hosting photo ops with the president or attending secret dinners at the White House -its leaders’ responses to the ban extension have varied dramatically from 2017. There were no tweets. No all-hands memos or meetings. No forceful statements on Facebook. No threats of legal action.

Historically, the tech industry has made immigration one of its leading political causes. Companies including Apple, Amazon, and Google were cofounded by immigrants or the children of immigrants, while startups to trillion-dollar goliaths rely on worker visas to stock their ranks. In January 2017, when asked why he was attending a protest of President Trump’s policy at the San Francisco International Airport, Google cofounder Sergey Brin gave a simple response: “I’m here because I’m a refugee.”

This time around, Google, whose CEO, Sundar Pichai, hails from India, did not respond to a request for comment. Late last year, BuzzFeed News reported that the company hired a former Department of Homeland Security official who had publicly defended a version of the travel ban for the administration and later worked on the policy of family separation at the southern border.

Amazon, whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, was raised by a Cuban immigrant, declined to comment. Apple did not respond to a request for comment. One company said there was no need to issue a statement because the ban was “more limited in scope” and had not impacted its employees.

“As we have said regarding earlier efforts to limit immigration on a country-specific basis, we believe that as a nation of immigrants we all benefit from welcoming people from around the world to live here, work here, and contribute to our society,” a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News on Monday. They also pointed to a 2017 post by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in which he noted his concern with “the recent executive orders signed by President Trump.” The issue of immigration was “personal for me,” Zuckerberg said then, because of his Polish, Austrian, and German heritage.

While Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has not tweeted in opposition to the new policy, as he did in 2017, a company spokesperson noted that the company depended on “an international, vibrant workforce.” Late last year, Dorsey visited Nigeria and said that he wanted to live in Africa in the future.

“We believe decisions such as this have the potential to harm US competitiveness and credibility on the global stage,” the Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed News on Monday.

Microsoft, which had no employees affected by the recent travel ban extension, responded on Monday after questions from BuzzFeed News.

“While our country must ensure security for its citizens and residents, we’re concerned when immigration policies create restrictions for entire countries,” a company spokesperson said. “We need to make sure our nation remains a magnet for the world's best and brightest.”

A few companies issued statements immediately after the Trump administration’s announcement, among them Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann, who said on Friday that the “news of an expanded travel ban by an the Administration that prioritizes borders over creed is a shameful overeach of bigotry and elevates the Muslim Ban to new heights of hate.”

“Given Airbnb’s very purpose is to facilitate people to people belonging, as a company and a community, we objected to the original travel ban and continue to believe such policies are in opposition to our purpose,” Airbnb wrote on a company blog last Friday. “We believe that you should be able to travel to, and live in any community around the world, regardless of your race, religion or ethnicity – that the power to travel makes us all better.”

Those statements were the exception. Other companies that did not respond to BuzzFeed News’ request for comment on the travel ban included Salesforce -whose CEO, Marc Benioff, recently spent part of January hobnobbing with Ivanka Trump in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum. Spokespeople for Tesla and SpaceX, both led by Elon Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, also did not respond.


Following the publication of this story, ride-sharing company Lyft said, "The recent expansion of the immigration ban is antithetical to Lyft's values." A spokesperson for its competitor Uber noted that "policies such as these move us all in the wrong direction."

Friday’s announcement came within a week of the three-year anniversary of the original travel ban, which has partly survived legal challenges to place restrictions on people from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

BuzzFeed News previously reported on a draft of the latest presidential proclamation, which detailed how the administration conducted reviews of the “identity management” and security protocols for 200 countries that led to its decision.

Postmates' Lehmann, who is from Germany, fundamentally disagreed with that move. “As an immigrant myself, I know turning our backs on the values and countries that our citizens & neighbors hail from, runs counter to America and risks undermining our competitive prosperity," he said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

TechDigits
0:00
0:00
Close
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The future of sports
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
UK Crypto and Stablecoin Regulations Become Law as Royal Assent is Granted
A Delaware city wants to let businesses vote in its elections
Alef Aeronautics Achieves Historic Milestone with Flight Certification for World's First Flying Car
Google Blocked Access to Canadian News in Response to New Legislation
French Politicians Advocate for Pan-European Regulation on Social Media Influencers
Melinda French Gates Advocates for Increased Female Representation in AI to Prevent Bias
Snapchat+ gains 4 million paying subscribers in its first year
Apple Makes History as the First Public Company Valued at $3 Trillion
Elon Musk Implements Twitter Limits to Tackle Data Scraping, but Faces Criticism for Technical Misunderstanding
EU and UK's Slow Electric Vehicle Adoption Raises Questions About the Transition to Green Mobility
Top Companies Express Concerns Over Europe's Proposed AI Law, Citing Competitiveness and Investment Risks
Meta Unveils Insights on AI Usage in Facebook and Instagram, Amid Growing Calls for Transparency
Crypto Scams Against Seniors Soar by 78% in 2022, Experts Urge Vigilance
The End of an Era: National Geographic Dismisses Last of Its Staff Writers
Shield Your Wallet: The Perils of Wireless Credit Card Theft
Harvard Scientist Who Studies Honesty Accused Of Data Fraud, Put On Leave
Putting an End to the Subscription Snare: The Battle Against Unwitting Commitments
The Legal Perils of AI: Lawyer Faces Sanctions for Relying on Fictional Cases Generated by Chatbot
ChatGPT’s "Grandma Exploit": Ingenious Hack Exposes Loophole in AI, Generates Free Software Codes
The Disney Downturn: A Near Billion-Dollar Box Office Blow for the House of Mouse
A Digital Showdown: Canada Challenges Tech Giants with The Online News Act, Meta Strikes Back
Distress in the Depths: Submersible and Passengers Missing in Titanic Wreckage Expedition
Mark Zuckerberg stealing another idea: Twitter
European Union's AI Regulations Risk Self-Sabotage, Cautions smart and brave Venture Capitalist Joe Lonsdale
Nvidia GPUs are so hard to get that rich venture capitalists are buying them for the startups they invest in
Chinese car exports surge
Reddit Blackout: Thousands of Communities Protest "Ludicrous" Pricing Changes
Nvidia Joins Tech Giants as First Chipmaker to Reach $1 Trillion Valuation
AI ‘extinction’ should be same priority as nuclear war – experts
×