IT BYTES BACK! says: Trump Takes Out US Tech with Travel Ban

Trump’s notorious travel ban of Muslim majority nations may be the final nail in the coffin of America’s tech industry.

Major tech companies like Facebook, Apple and Alphabet have already released statements expressing concern over this Un-American behaviour and yet others like Google, Airbnb and Viber have contributed cash and free services to those affected.

But why the big hoo-haa by these tech companies?

That’s because a huge concentration of over 250,000 Muslims live around the Bay area of San Francisco, a majority of them working in tech.

Vivek Wadhwa, an author who has written a book and research papers about immigrants and innovation, discovered that more than 60-percent of the patent filings at tech companies like Qualcomm, General Electric and Cisco Systems were contributed by immigrants.

He also found that 24.3 percent of US engineering and technology start-up companies and 43.9 percent of those based in Silicon Valley were founded by immigrants.

In response to to Trump’s ban, Vivek in a Washington Post article also wrote, “Already, the number of billion-dollar technology start-ups, commonly called “unicorns,” that are located outside the United States has been increasing significantly Fifteen years ago, almost all were in the United States, while today 86 of the 191 unicorns are in countries such as China and India. We can expect this trend to accelerate because the Trump administration has just added fuel to the fire of innovation abroad and handicapped our own technology industry.”

Countries like the United Kingdom are also beside themselves with joy, seeing opportunity to be the alternative destination to the US-based Silicon Valley.

Update: A new H-1B visa bill is being tabled, with the objective of refocusing it to its original intent which according to California congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, “…to seek out and find the best and brightest from around the world, and to supplement the US workforce with talented, highly-paid, and highly-skilled workers who help create jobs here in America, not replace them.”

Read about the H1B visa reform impact here.

IT BYTES BACK! says: With such deadly consequences upon America’s tech industry, maybe the question to ask isn’t “Does the Trump administration know what it is doing?” but instead should be “Does the Trump administration know something that the rest of the world doesn’t?”