Silicon Valley CEOs resist Trump’s immigration ban

Top Silicon Valley executives (CEOs) strongly criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration executive orders. They claimed that Trump’s executive orders that barred the U.S. citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the country not only undermined basic values such as liberty, openness, equality, and others but also damaged core strengths such as creativity and innovation.

In effect, Silicon Valley is considered as a region where elite immigrants are actively working in the U.S. The legendary Silicon Valley figure Steve Jobs, the deceased founder of Apple, was also a son of Syrian migrant.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin attended the anti-immigrant executive order protest held on Sunday afternoon (local time) at San Francisco International Airport. He told protesters that he came here because he was also an immigrant and pointed out injustice of Trump’s immigrant ban. Brin’s family immigrated to the U.S. when he was 6 years old to avoid poor and oppressed surroundings before the fall of the Soviet Union.

“Like many of you, I’m concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. He has said that his great grandparents came from Germany, Austria and Poland and his Chinese-American wife Priscilla’s parents were refugees from China and Vietnam.

“Trump's actions are hurting Netflix employees around the world, and are so un-American it pains us all,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings denounced Trump’s policy. "Not allowing countries or refugees into America is not right and we must stand with those who are affected," Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky tweeted. The blanket entry ban on citizens from certain primarily Muslim countries is not the best way to address the country's challenges," Tesla CEO also twitted. The reason why CEOs of top Silicon Valley companies are strongly standing against Trump’s anti-immigration executive orders is closely related to their management as many of engineers and researchers of their companies are immigrants.

Se-Hyung Lee turtle@donga.com