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97 Tech Companies Including Apple, Google, Microsoft Call Travel Ban Unlawful In Rare Coordinated Legal Action (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader shares a WashingtonPost report: Silicon Valley is stepping up its confrontation with the Trump administration. On Sunday night, technology giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Uber and many others filed a legal brief opposing the administration's contentious entry ban. The move represents a rare coordinated action across a broad swath of the industry (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source) -- 97 companies in total -- and demonstrates the depth of animosity toward the Trump ban. The amicus brief was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which is expected to rule within a few days on an appeal by the administration after a federal judge in Seattle issued late Friday a temporary restraining order putting the entry ban on hold. The brief comes at the end of a week of nationwide protests against the plan -- as well as a flurry of activity in Silicon Valley, a region that sees immigration as central to its identity as an innovation hub.From a TechCrunch report: Notably absent from the list of 97 companies are several who met with Trump prior to his inauguration: Amazon, Oracle, IBM, SpaceX and Tesla. Although Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was highly critical of Trump prior to his election, he has not spoken out against the immigration policy. Oracle CEO Safra Catz is serving as an advisor to the Trump transition team, while SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has defended his decision to remain on an advisory council for Trump.

39 of 626 comments (clear)

  1. Cheap by fluffernutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why don't we just allow them to get exemptions for anyone they have that qualifies as a truly highly skilled employee that they can't get locally and be done with it? Personally I feel there wouldn't be that many and this is actually about cheap labor.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    1. Re:Cheap by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I have a *really* hard time believing these companies have such a large part of their workforce that they depend on daily coming in and out of Syria, Iran, etc....

      I never knew those were the tech Mecca of the world....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:Cheap by FyRE666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Maybe some people look at the bigger picture, instead of purely their own selfish interests at that moment in time? Just because the discrimination might not immediately affect them today, it doesn't mean it doesn't affect their staff, family, friends, or the image of America.

    3. Re:Cheap by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have a *really* hard time believing these companies have such a large part of their workforce that they depend on daily coming in and out of Syria, Iran, etc....

      This particular pushback is just them testing the waters on how to stop Trump on immigration. Their REAL concern is what he might do next to their H1B fount of cheap labor if he wins this battle.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    4. Re:Cheap by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe some people look at the bigger picture, instead of purely their own selfish interests at that moment in time?

      Oh yeah, because Microsoft, Apple, Facebook etc. are doing this because they *CARE*, not because Trump is about to take away their cheap slave-labor pool and make them hire American workers.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    5. Re:Cheap by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Lots of more rural places around here struggle to find enough doctors. Doctors are in demand, they can pick the best places to go to, and few want to be right out in the sticks it seems.

      That's one reason why tech companies congregate around places like Silicon Valley. That's where the talent is, and when the talent is in demand it gets to decide where it's going to work.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Cheap by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How do you explain those companies investing large sums of money trying to train up American kids if they prefer the slave-labour H1Bs? Insurance perhaps?

      Intel threw $300,000,000 at increasing diversity and equality. Either there is a genuine shortage of skill, or they genuinely care about that stuff*, or... Or what?

      * I refuse to believe that Intel could be induced to spend a third of a billion dollars by feminists, persuasive as we are.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:Cheap by blind+biker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why was I hired and accepted? I had a combination of speciality and lack of people willing to work in the location the business concerned was located at.

      Lack of people willing to work? The very fact you claim something you cannot know, makes me believe that you're just bullshitting. I am not a US citizen and I don't live there, but I can very easily believe that the company you're working at could have found the necessary workforce in the country, had they be willing to pay for it.

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    8. Re:Cheap by unixisc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm sure the people who did not bother about terrorism, like the ones killed at a Christmas party in San Bernardino or the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, are proud that they were not pathetic cowards

    9. Re:Cheap by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Strange, according to their report last year only 46% of hires were non-white and non-male: http://www.intel.co.uk/content...

      Shame you didn't manage to record being told flat out that you were the wrong colour, or you could be rich by now from the proceeds of your discrimination lawsuit.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:Cheap by unixisc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's not like the people protesting this ban would have been for it had it included Pakistan, Afghanistan (where that Pulse night club attacker was really from), Saudi Arabia or Emirates. So let's not use that straw man

  2. Meh. by msauve · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Companies don't do this because they have deeply held legal or ethical principles. They do it because one side of the case makes them more money than the other.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  3. This backlash is done by children by JackieBrown · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Anyone that even states they will meet with Trump are faced by backlash, protests, and boycotts.

    The idea of forcing Trump to stay solely within his echo chamber just shows that these whiny people and businesses (including all the people that threaten to boycott anyone that might even sing at a Trump event) are nothing more than pouting children.

    I hope Trump just keeps moving forward. These are not people that will ever be satisfied or content with Trump. There is no reason to cater to them at all.

    1. Re:This backlash is done by children by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 3, Insightful

      These are not people that will ever be satisfied or content with Trump. There is no reason to cater to them at all.

      Well, yes, intelligent people see him for the Dunning-Kruger charlatan that he is, so even when his policies are advantageous, they fear the taint his supporting them would bring to their cause. So opposing Trump is always a win-win in the long run.

      I know you people still feel like losers, even after your political tantrum was successful, so it must really stick in your craw when Trump is thwarted. You're just going to have to learn to live with it. The President is not a king and he must answer to a wide variety of power that challenges his own - and his only originates from and is limited by the Constitution. He has no soft power at all. His leverage is that of a toddler holding gasoline and a match.

      You might want to consider why right-wing boycotts and protests usually amount to nothing more than providing material to comedians, while the protests against Trump have traction and are supported by the most successful companies. I mean, even Anheuser-Busch trolled you dumbasses hard.

  4. Re:how about this by Kierthos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or, and I'm just throwing this out there....

    it's a terribly conceived, poorly written, and horribly implemented EO that doesn't actually make the U.S. safer, provides our enemies with the recruitment point they've been wanting for years, and conveniently leaves out countries in the Middle East where terrorists who have killed people on U.S. soil have come from. (They're also countries that Trump has business interests in, but I'm sure that's just an amazing coincidence.)

    --
    Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
  5. How can it be unlawful if it was made a law? by mark-t · · Score: 2, Insightful
    That seems like an inherent contradiction in terms.

    Unconstitutional, I can understand, or even calling it just plain wrong, but unlawful?

  6. Re: Discraceful! by dougdonovan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    if you are legal to live in the US. stay here. if not. get a clue or get deported. this is not rocket science. there are some people that the US citizen is simply not comfortable with and this is why they voted for trump.

  7. Re:how about this by fluffernutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's all true, but here we have an aggressive fight by 97 tech companies that don't seem to give a crap about people in their own back yard. You have to wonder what their real motivation is.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  8. Re: how about this by FyRE666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If by "slave labour" you mean the tech workers earning 6 figure salaries, with in some cases stock options, then yeah I'm ok with that.

  9. Re:Interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    More interesting than that is that fact that wanting to hire Americans before foreigners is considered racist.

  10. Re:how about this by Kierthos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most, if not all, of those 97 companies are global. When one country does {stupid thing}, other countries tend to react to that by doing their own {differently stupid but related thing}. That makes it very hard to continue doing business effectively.

    Now, are these companies uncaring about people in their own backyard? Well, technically, yes. But no more so than normal. They want to continue to make profits. If they could make lots of money by treating all employees like fluffy bunnies who just need a hug, they would. Especially if they would make less money by being uncaring.

    But most companies do not shit on their employees without a reason. And most companies want employee morale to be good, as it increase productivity. If employees are worried about being stranded in another country because the country they work in is passing poorly thought out travel laws, it tends to affect employee morale negatively.

    --
    Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
  11. Re:They are provoking a response by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You don't get it do you? Blue collar workers have been putting up with their jobs being outsourced since the 1990's under various trade agreements. The white collar workers would go on and on about how those people should have gotten jobs just like them, and be safe from outsourcing. Now it's happening to those white collar workers who were smugly looking down. This backlash is decades in the making, and in some cases it's even worse on particular parts(especially racially) of the US then others. Hell, it's the same here in Canada. There are places that still haven't recovered from NAFTA, and that's in my own backyard.

    These companies can stomp their feet all they want, and they can pump out the polls saying "look at all these people saying how much they hate Trump." But in 90% of the cases people fear a backlash against themselves and will lie about their actual answer for fear of being attacked. Either socially, or politically. That's one of the main reasons the polls were so wildly out-of-whack compared to the actual election. Even democrats are finally starting to get it. On top of that, it would have to take something massive and I mean truly massive at this point to stem the losses that Democrats have taken in the last decade. You know, like full-on-depression levels of economic collapse. And even then, the chances of that working are less likely then you think. Ask the NDP and Liberals here in Canada how well a similar plan worked out for them from ~2000-2015. I'll give you a tip: It didn't.

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    Om, nomnomnom...
  12. Re: Discraceful! by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Companies spend millions on anti-Trump ads because he's threatening their H1B slave labor pool. They don't give a flying fuck about his stance on social issues.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  13. Re:how about this by DrXym · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I expect their "real motivation" without any reaching for conspiracy theories is that this harms their business. It's a stupid order issued by a stupid president to placate stupid people.

  14. Re:Interesting by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It wasn't the Republican establishment that put Trump into power. They did everything they could to keep him from winning either the nomination or the Presidency. It was the people who voted for him, the people who are tired of getting fucked over by shitty trade and immigration policies and who no longer give a fuck who the political establishment (or CNN or Hollywood) wants them to vote for.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  15. Re: Discraceful! by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Companies never directly spend millions on political ads to influence policy - through PACs, yeah, but directly, pretty much never. They do, however, spend millions on ads that they think will sell their products, and it happens that "Yeah, we think Trump sucks too. Drink Budweiser" sells products. You can probably figure out why for yourself.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  16. Re:They are provoking a response by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My dice has a 16% chance of generating a six. It still happens from time to time. Your N=1 dataset is irrelevant.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  17. Re: Discraceful! by tripleevenfall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On both sides of the aisle, the social issues are for the activists and the idealogues. Politicians pay lip service to them and then take no action on them in office. (Well, until now)

    What gets the politicians moving is not social issues. It's money. Money from corporate donations from these big tech companies. (What side gets most of that money?) The manpower of the ground game in election races that keep them in power.

    Both parties pretend to care about social issues, but all they really care about is keeping themselves in office and their parties in power.

    A really nice article in National Review pointed this out last week - http://www.nationalreview.com/...

  18. Double-edged sword by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1, Insightful

    These companies might want to be careful with this move. They keep claiming they're not overlooking/bypassing/not hiring U.S. workers for cheaper, overseas labor, yet here they are claiming this ban will affect their operations because they rely heavily on workers from these countries.

    They claim there is a shortage of tech workers, and have been for decades, yet each year thousands of workers are laid off and thousands of new graduates enter the workforce. To claim they can't find someone while at the same time screaming they need to have these overseas workers to fill slots is disingenuous and hypocritical and does nothing to help their case.

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  19. Re:Swap positions by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From what I can see, the problem in the most egregious cases isn't the rules, it's that the rules haven't been enforced. With Trump's general deregulation policy, I suppose there really is no alternative than to heavily limit H1Bs, because the border is the one place he seems keen to have lots of barriers.

    Of course, you already see places like Europe and China making a clear argument that maybe all the experts should go work for them. Trump's policies may have the effect of starving the US of pools of foreign talent that have made it a dominant economic power for decades.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  20. Re:Did you forget who made the list of countries? by MightyMartian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The fact the intent of the list was different than Trump's has no bearing on this? I'm trying to sort out this logic. It's almost as if you're trying to assert that Obama is somehow responsible for President Trump's EO. As others have pointed out, these countries are not responsible for attacks on US soil. Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, did prove 9-11 hijackers, so one wonders why actual countries that have produced actual terrorists that have actually attacked US citizens on US soil were not added. It's almost as if the EO was poorly thought-out, was meant more as a bit of security theater, but it was so badly written and coordination with the departments needed to enforce it so mismanaged that it turned into a complete shit show.

    The real problem with the travel ban, to my mind, isn't that it happened (that was stupid enough), but if you are going to implement such policies, then implement them. What we're seeing here isn't just nasty government, what we're seeing is just plain incompetent government.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  21. Re:They are provoking a response by MightyMartian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Indeed. One thing that is pretty clear is that Trump's supporters have an extraordinarily poor grasp of statistics, how they are generated and what they mean.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  22. Re:Interesting by jeff4747 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You misunderstand the goal.

    The goal is not a competent administration. The goal is to throw a Molotov cocktail at the status quo, because it has become obvious that no one in that status quo is listening.

  23. Re:how about this by meta-monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. Import people with a wide variety of incompatible cultures to your country.

    2. Actively discourage assimilation by promoting multiculturalism and denouncing any criticism of the incompatible culture as "racism."

    3. When violence inevitably occurs, demand expanded police and surveillance powers to maintain "stability."

    You lose your culture, are forced to live next to people who are at best indifferent to you and at worst want to kill you, lose your civil rights and get a police state, too. What's not to love?

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  24. NOT a ban by p51d007 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    More fake news from the left. It isn't a BAN, it's a PAUSE, until people are CHECKED PROPERLY. But that's ok...the left is still ticked off the winner of the popular election didn't win, even though we've NEVER in the history of the USA ever elected someone via the popular election. That's not surprising since the Constitution and the real history of the USA isn't taught anymore. Poor little snowflakes...go to your safe space. Adults are in charge of government.

  25. Re:how about this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or it could be they lose their predatory hiring practices and want to unite against it? Your insult of "stupid people" IS a major reason Trump got elected. You do know that, right? You continuing to call everything you personally don't like "stupid" is not only immature and very ignorant, but it will ensure Trump gets a second term. Keep it up, and you'll get more of what you don't want.

  26. Re:Offtopic by ClickOnThis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I understand feminism as a political movement that:

    1) insists that women are victims, thus encouraging a victim mentality
    2) insists that women deserve special treatment, thus encouraging an entitlement mentality.

    If I am incorrect on these points, could you please correct me? No links to novels please, something trenchant, clear, and supported. Thanks.

    Feminism has many faces, and with it many definitions. My understanding of feminism is not as dismissive as yours. IMHO, feminists:

    (1) believe in social and political equality of the sexes; and
    (2) acknowledge that women have been disadvantaged historically because of their gender.

    And that means people of either gender can be, and are, feminists.

    I trust the above is trenchant and clear. As for supported, well, you could spend a long time googling, but the Wikipedia article is not bad.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  27. Re:Interesting by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The goal is not a competent administration. The goal is to throw a Molotov cocktail at the status quo, because it has become obvious that no one in that status quo is listening.

    I'm sorry, but I don't think you're in touch with the bulk of Trump's power base, which both objects to the status quo and thinks that Trump is "a successful businessman" which they in turn think is "what America needs right now". They are not in touch with the facts that Trump is not a successful businessman — he is outperformed by the S&P 500, which should be a compelling argument even if you don't believe that he is a con artist. Or how about this one: he's been outperformed by Paris Hilton. I like that one even better.

    Trump is a con artist, but those of his supporters who are willing to believe that also believe that this is a good thing, because it makes him effective. It hasn't dawned on them that this means that they can be getting conned because they are suffering from Dunning-Krueger and operating way above their respective pay grades as a result — literally.

    Voting for Trump because of dissatisfaction with the status quo is, as has been stated previously in many circles, cutting off one's face to spite one's face, never mind the nose. Trump is the prime example of a rich white fat cat who abuses everyone around him; perhaps, in fact, the best example America has ever seen. Trump is America's most successful con artist. Odds are that there has never been a president who cared less for this country than Trump. Trump owns a visa mill of his very own; anyone who imagines that he's going to fix the problem is suffering a lack of everything but imagination.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  28. Re:how about this by ClickOnThis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In a gentle way, Canada has done (1) and (2) pretty much since the 1950s. Certainly there has been some vigorous debate, but no widespread denunciation or violence.

    Canada has not "lost" its culture, at least not due to multiculturalism. On the contrary, it has evolved into a mosaic of cultures from all over the world, but with a common theme of mutual respect and understanding.

    Fearing the loss of your culture and imagining your neighbors want to kill you should be a wake-up call to reconsider what you think your culture really is.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.