Credit: Tom Humberstone

In January when President Donald Trump issued an executive order limiting immigration, the news was met with clenched fists in Silicon Valley. On big tech campuses, like Facebook and Google, there were protests, rallies, and boycotts. Of the hundred-some companies that signed an amicus brief protesting the decision, most were tech companies. This sudden political awakening, some argued, was confirmation of tech’s liberal slant. Of course the young employees who populate the Valley bleed blue.

Here’s the other interpretation of what inspired the top rungs of tech companies to stick their necks out in protest: America’s tech industry is wholly reliant on immigrants. Big name founders, from eBay’s Pierre Omidyar to Elon Musk, are immigrants. If you count the first-generation offspring of immigrants, the number grows. (Let’s all remember that Steve Jobs is the child of a Syrian refugee.) Last year, the National Foundation for American Policy released a study of the startups that were worth over a billion dollars. More than half had at least one founder who was an […]