[leereeves]

Trump issued an executive order (EO) temporarily suspending entry to the US for nationals of 7 countries listed by the DHS as "Countries of Concern", and temporarily suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

The State of Washington sued to block the EO.

The lower court judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the EO and Trump appealed.

Now these 97 tech companies are sharing their opinion with the appellate court:

> The Order represents a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years—and the Order inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth as a result. The Order makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world’s best employees. It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies’ ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States.

[pas]

Immigration? What about those with valid visas? It was a travel ban also. It was a very simple order to don't let anyone in from those countries, wasn't it?

[leereeves]

Yes, corrected.

The specific phrasing in the order was "suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons".

[aerovistae]

7* countries

[leereeves]

Corrected, thank you.

[tzaman]

Thank you!

[hueving]

>Now these 97 tech companies are sharing their opinion

To clarify, this is the leadership of those 97 companies. There is no indication whether or not that this is how the majority of their employees feel.

This is the same virtue signaling that resulted in Trump being elected in the first place. An employee of one of these companies wouldn't dare now to express their agreement with Trump's policy because it's against the company's official stance.

[_delirium]

Isn't that always the case? I've rarely been in particularly strong agreement with the politics of upper management almost anywhere I've worked, but upper management doesn't care. That's capitalism: we don't work in worker-run organizations (most of us, anyway), and company political stands aren't submitted to an internal vote.

Trump supporters disagreeing with their management from the right are hardly a unique case; many of us also disagree with our management from the left (e.g. being union supporters in a company whose management is anti-union, or being in favor of a carbon tax in a company whose management lobbies against one).

[pjc50]

> virtue signaling

It's a funny phrase this. Is any public statement about morality "virtue signalling"? What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_... - is the condemnation of same-sex marriage by a restaurant chain "virtue signalling", or something else? "Bigotry signalling"?

[d4rti]

> The phrase “virtue signalling” came up a lot, which is the sequel insult to “champagne socialist”; again, it doesn’t have very much meaning, beyond “person X holds views less compromised and more ambitious than mine, ergo, person X is a narcissist who uses other people’s misery as grist to their own self-fashioning.” It was invented by the mild-mannered rightwing polemicist James Bartholomew.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/10/labour...

[matthewmacleod]

That's an obviously nonsense idea. Must every public stance taken by a company be unanimously agreed by every employee? Clearly that's not feasible. Is your opinion then that no company should take public policy stances?

[Arizhel]

>Is your opinion then that no company should take public policy stances?

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Otherwise, by giving these companies a voice, you're giving more weight to the statements by company executives than to anyone else. The employees are all assumed to be in agreement, which is a false assumption. Corporate CEOs shouldn't have any more voice in any political discussion than anyone else, including a janitor.

[moultano]

At Google at least nearly the entire company held a protest against it. I assume at other companies people feel similarly about their co-workers, and want to protect them.

[nsxwolf]

If you were a pro-travel ban tech employee, in this climate, would you even want that to be known? That would likely be a career limiting move.