Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Snap and more than 150 other tech companies in the Unites States on Wednesday urged a federal court to block the Donald Trump administrations’s latest attempt to ban people from six Muslim-majority nations. The Silicon Valley majors, including SpaceX, Uber and Spotify, filed a brief at the US District Court of Appeals against Trump’s second travel ban order, saying it will inflict “substantial harm on US companies, their employees, and the entire economy”, Recode reported.
The 162 firms said the restriction will make it harder for American companies to hire talented employees, will increase operational costs, make it more difficult for American firms to compete globally and make immigrant-friendly nations more attractive to investors. “The second order effects a fundamental shift in the rules governing entry into the United States,” lawyers argued in the “amicus brief”, adding that the move discriminated on the basis of religion.
On March 6, the US president signed a new executive order imposing a 90-day ban on the entry of people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from March 16, leaving Iraq out of the list. But a federal judge in Hawaii had blocked the revised travel ban just hours before it was due to come into effect on March 16, a move Trump had called an “unprecedented judicial overreach”.
The news comes a day after Trump signed another executive order, which introduces changes to the H-1B visa policy that companies use to hire foreigners for high-skilled jobs. The order – dubbed the “Buy American, Hire American” order – directs the four federal departments of labour, justice, homeland security and state to crack down on alleged “fraud and abuse” in the immigration system to protect American workers.
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