14 DAY TRIAL // It has become pretty clear at this point that President Trump will not give up on his biased travel ban, so the tech community is once more gathering forces to fight against a policy that would restrict its powers to hire new talents from across the globe.
58 companies have signed the amicus brief submitted to a Hawaii district court on Wednesday. They use this opportunity to denounce Trump's administration's revised travel ban which should go into effect shortly.
"The technological and scientific breakthroughs that fuel the economic engine of the country - search, cloud computing, social media, artificial intelligence, faster and faster microprocessors, the Internet of Everything, reusable spacecraft - were all made possible by the ingenuity, imagination and invention of newcomers to America, including Muslims from across the world. Never in modern American history has that infusion of talent and passion and creativity been stanched, as it is vital to the lifeblood of our economy. Never, until now," kicks off the amicus brief.
The previous travel ban had a much shorter fuse, and it went into effect almost immediately. Then, the tech industry could do nothing else than to file briefs after the fact, fund legal organizations that fight against government overreach and so on.
The resistance
The 58 companies want an immediate injunction, saying that the executive order would inflict significant and irreparable harm on US businesses and their employees.
The revised ban would temporarily ban access into the United States to people coming from six predominantly Muslim nations, while also cutting down the number of refugees accepted into the United States to 50,000 per year, less than half the number previously accepted.
The list of companies that signed the brief includes Airbnb, Dropbox, Electronic Arts, Evernote, Flipboard, Imgur, Indiegogo, Kickstarter, Lyft, MongoDB, Patreon, Pinterest, Quora, Shutterstock, Square, Upwork, Wikimedia Foundation, and the Y Combinator Management, to name a few.
Several major players are missing from the list, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and Spotify. In fact, this time around, there are far fewer companies signing the amicus than there were following the initial "Muslim ban" when 127 signatures adorned the document.
Update: The Federal judge in Hawaii has halted Donald Trump's new immigration ban targeting six predominant Muslim countries, a day before it is supposed to take effect.