Tech companies stateside have suggested President Donald Trump's travel ban has inflicted "significant harm on American business, innovation and growth."
A brief by 97 technology companies opposes Trump's recent executive order, which imposes a 90-day ban affecting citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and a 120-day bar on all refugees. The ban was blocked by a federal judge in Seattle on Saturday, and the Department of Homeland Security has stopped enforcing it for the time being. The companies filed the brief to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to rule on the ban in days.
The legal brief — backed by companies such as Apple, Airbnb, Google, Facebook and Intel — calls the ban arbitrary and subject to "inconsistency or abuse."
The tech giants — many of which were either co-founded or led by immigrants — also argued it is no coincidence that immigrants are often at the crux of innovation, adding that "people who choose to leave everything that is familiar and journey to an unknown land to make a new life ... are endowed with drive, creativity, determination — and just plain guts,"
