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Tech giants Apple, Google and Facebook are fighting President Trump’s immigration ban

A group of 97 companies, most from the tech industry, filed a legal brief opposing the travel ban.

Hillary Clinton And Donald Trump Face Off In First Presidential Debate At Hofstra University
Hillary Clinton And Donald Trump Face Off In First Presidential Debate At Hofstra University
Win McNamee / Getty Images

Dozens of tech companies — including Apple, Google and Facebook — have signed a legal brief condemning President’s Trump’s recent immigration ban, claiming the ban inflicts “substantial harm on U.S. companies.”

The amicus brief, which was signed by 97 companies primarily from the tech industry, was filed late Sunday evening with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It capped off a busy weekend in which Trump’s immigration ban was lifted on Friday by a federal judge in Seattle, and an appeal by the Trump administration to restore it was then denied early Sunday.

Recode reported last week that major tech companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft were working together to write a letter opposing Trump’s policies on immigration.

The joint brief claims that the immigration ban hinders tech companies from recruiting and makes it hard for American companies to compete internationally. Here’s a small part of the brief, which you can read in full below:

The Order effects a sudden shift in the rules governing entry into the United States, and is inflicting substantial harm on U.S. companies. It hinders the ability of American companies to attract great talent; increases costs imposed on business; makes it more difficult for American firms to compete in the international market-place; and gives global enterprises a new, significant incentive to build operations — and hire new employees — outside the United States.

Tech has been up in arms over the past week about Trump’s immigration ban, which temporarily blocked immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, temporarily suspended all refugee admissions and indefinitely blocked refugees from Syria from entering the U.S.

A number of tech executives have spoken out against the order, including Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. At Google, employees held a protest last week at company headquarters.

The backlash against Uber and its CEO Travis Kalanick, who was on Trump’s advisory council, was so strong that Kalanick decided to leave the council late last week. “Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that,” he wrote in a company-wide email.

Amicus Brief -- Tech v. Trump Immigration Ban by Kurt Wagner on Scribd


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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