Why Did 97 (Mostly) Tech Companies Come Out Against Trump’s Immigration Ban?

By Karen Cator, CEO of Digital Promise   

Late Sunday, 97 U.S. companies, including tech giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and Twitter, filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of a lawsuit being brought by the states of Washington and Minnesota against Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration. The order bars Syrian refugees and travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. Why did these companies feel compelled to do this? And why are they mostly tech companies?

There are no simple answers. And it would be na?ve to think that all 97 companies signed on to the brief for the same reasons. While acknowledging the need to protect national security, the brief took issue with the sweeping scope of the order, citing American values and the contributions immigrants have made to our country in all fields of endeavor, including business. (It’s worth noting that 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children.) It also asserted that the restrictions imposed by the order would make it hard for them to recruit and retain top foreign talent, which would be bad for business and the U.S. economy.

But perhaps another reason so many tech companies signed on is that while all companies in all industries must compete effectively to succeed, tech companies face an especially harsh business reality: they must innovate or die.

Unlike companies that sell soap or soft drinks—products that can sometimes dominate their markets for decades—tech companies must continually improve their products to meet the rapidly changing needs and expectations of their customers and stave off aggressive competitors. The tech industry “graveyard” is filled with companies that were once leaders, but failed to evolve and ultimately went out of business—or experienced an even worse fate, which was to become irrelevant.

What’s the connection between immigration and innovation? In a word, diversity.

Research conducted over the past few decades has shown that a diverse workforce can be a key driver of a company’s innovation and market growth, especially when the company aspires to compete on a global scale. The consulting firm and long-time research partner for Fortune’s annual 100 Best Companies to Work For, Great Place to Work, noted in a commentary on its Top 30 Best Workplaces in Technology for 2016, “businesses risk missing promising solutions or entire markets for their products when they lack voices from diverse backgrounds.”

Great Place to Work reported that companies with fewer employees who report “fair treatment” based on race or gender tended to score lower on measures of innovation.

This doesn’t mean a workforce that is diverse based solely on demographic attributes such as nationality, religious background, race/ethnicity, gender, age and sexual orientation will always out-innovate a more homogeneous workforce. Research shows that groups of people with different perspectives tend to consistently generate better ideas if their contributions are encouraged and respected: in other words, when diversity is supported by inclusion.

Which is why companies that benefit most from diversity on an innovation scale are those that assemble diverse groups of employees, charge them with solving big problems, and build a culture of inclusion.

So why were so many of the U.S. companies signing on to the brief tech companies? Because tech companies would lose if blanket restrictions on immigration from Muslim countries are made permanent or perhaps even expanded to include immigrants from other parts of the world.

And if an entire U.S. industry loses, we all lose.

Karen Cator is President and CEO of Digital Promise, a non-profit whose mission is to improve the opportunity for all Americans to learn by accelerating innovation in education through technology and research. From 2009-2013, Karen was Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education.