What Tech Companies Say About Immigrants In Their Brief Against Trump’s Ban

Men pray during a protest by
NY Yemenis and supporters over President Donald Trump’s executive order. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

By NAN Contributor

News Americas, LOS ANGELES, CA, Tues. Feb. 7, 2017: Late Sunday, some 127 tech companies, including Airbnb, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, Snap and Uber, filed an impassioned legal amicus brief in The United States Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit in Washington, condemning Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration. Here are ten things the companies credit immigrants with in the brief:

1: Immigrants make many of the US’ greatest discoveries, and create some of the country’s most innovative and iconic companies.

2: There is no denying the contributions inclusive immigration policies have made to the American economy.

3: Immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list, including Apple, Kraft,Ford, General Electric, AT&T, Google, McDonald’s, Boeing, and Disney. Collectively, these companies generate annual revenue of $4.2 trillion and employ millions of Americans.

4: Immigrants are among our leading entrepreneurs, politicians, artists, and philanthropists and 19.1 percent of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa were entrepreneurs.

5: The experience and energy of people who come to our country to seek a better life for themselves and their children—to pursue the “American Dream”—are woven throughout the social, political, and economic fabric of the United States.

6: The tremendous impact of immigrants on America—and on American business—is not happenstance. People who choose to leave everything that is familiar and journey to an unknown land to make a new life necessarily are endowed with drive, creativity, determination—and just plain guts. The energy they bring to America is a key reason why the American economy has been the greatest engine of prosperity and innovation in history.

7: Immigrants are leading entrepreneurs. The American economy stands apart because, more than any other place on earth, talented people from around the globe want to come here to start their businesses.

8: While accounting for 16 percent of the labor force nationally and 18 percent of business owners, immigrants make up 28 percent of Main Street business owners. These are “the shops and services that are the backbone of neighborhoods around the country.

9: Immigrants also fuel the growth of the economy as a whole. When immigrants enter the labor force, they increase the productive capacity of the economy and raise GDP. Their incomes rise, but so do those of natives.

10: Immigrants do not take jobs away from U.S. citizens—they create them. Thus, immigration “expand[s] the American work-force, and encourage[s] more business start-ups”—ensuring that [b]usinesses ranging from Apple Corporation to apple growers would be able to find the workers they need in America.