Amazon ,Google ,Twitter , and other major tech companies are criticizing President Donald Trump's move to halt certainimmigration visas .- The companies said it would make American firms less competitive and less diverse.
- In an order Monday, Trump extended a freeze on H-1B and other work visas, with officials arguing it would prevent immigrants from taking Americans' jobs during an economic crisis.
- The tech industry relies heavily on the H-1B visa program and other work visas to recruit employees from outside the US, particularly for technical facing jobs.
Major tech companies including Amazon, Uber, the Google parent
Trump issued a proclamation Monday suspending the issuance of a variety of visas that allow foreigners to work in the US for a limited amount of time. The administration said the suspension, which affects H-1B, H-2B, H-4, J-1, and L-1 visas, was necessary to protect American workers at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has pushed unemployment to its highest level in decades.
The order extends restrictions from April that put a 60-day freeze on work visas.
Tech companies rely on
"Preventing high-skilled professionals from entering the country and contributing to America's economic recovery puts American's global competitiveness at risk," an Amazon representative told Business Insider. "The value of high-skilled visa programs is clear."
The US has 85,000 "high-skilled" H-1B visa spots open each year.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai — an immigrant himself — tweeted his opposition to the order Monday, saying: "Immigration has contributed immensely to America's economic success, making it a global leader in tech, and also Google the company it is today."
Aaron Levie, the founder and CEO of Box, spoke even more forcefully, tweeting that Trump's order was "unbelievably bad policy on every level," would "only mean more jobs move outside the US," and "in no way makes America better or more competitive."
The order, which takes effect Wednesday and lasts until the year of the year, does not apply to foreign workers with visas who are already in the country or those outside the country who have already been issued visas, according to The Wall Street Journal.
On a call with reporters Monday, officials in the Trump administration said the order would reserve 525,000 jobs for American citizens and cited the coronavirus-induced high unemployment rate as one of the reasons for extending the freeze.
'This proclamation undermines America's greatest economic asset'
Several lawyers who Business Insider spoke with said they thought that this might lead to more restrictive immigration policy in the long term and that the administration was using the pandemic to carry out its efforts to limit immigration more permanently.
"My personal opinion is that we're not going to be going back to any type of easing of things, even as things settle down," Reaz Jafri, an immigration lawyer at Withers Worldwide, told Business Insider.
They also said this order and the previous order in April had led to confusion for many companies and people on work visas.
"Even for those of us who were in the weeds on these immigration issues, we have some concerns based off of language of what's going to be coming next," said Sharon Barney, an immigration lawyer at Leech Tishman.
—Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) June 22, 2020
One by one on Monday, a parade of tech companies and tech executives released statements on Twitter or through other channels, touting the contributions of immigrants to the US economy and arguing that Trump's order would make American companies less competitive by hindering their ability to hire.
"This proclamation undermines America's greatest economic asset: its diversity. People from all over the world come here to join our labor force, pay taxes, and contribute to our global competitiveness on the world stage," Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, Twitter's vice president of public policy and philanthropy for the Americas, told Business Insider in a statement.
Facebook echoed that and said restricting immigration would make it harder for the US economy to recover from the pandemic. "President Trump's latest proclamation uses the COVID-19 pandemic as justification for limiting immigration," a Facebook representative told NBC News. "In reality, the move to keep highly skilled talent out of the US will make our country's recovery even more difficult."
Other tech companies that spoke out against the order included Salesforce and Uber, the ride-hailing giant that called the order "disappointing for people from all over the world."
Netflix declined to comment for this story, while Apple and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.