Public colleges and more than 125 American businesses, including many of the titans of the tech industry, have entered the legal battle over President Trump’s extreme vetting executive order, insisting they have inherent rights to hire foreign workers and admit foreign students.
It’s perhaps the most expansive claim in the already groundbreaking court battle, which appears likely to settle exactly how much power presidents have to decide whom to let into the country — and whether states and businesses can establish an independent right to demand a stream of foreign workers and students.
Established tech giants such as Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. banded together with startups such as Uber and Airbnb to register their disapproval of Mr. Trump and his policy, saying they fear they will lose out on workers unwilling or unable to come to an unwelcoming U.S.
“This issue is so important and so core and fundamental to our basic values that basically the entire industry came together and signed onto this very rapidly. You name the company, and it’s probably signed on,” Mike Masnick, founder of Techdirt and the Copia Institute, which joined the tech companies’ legal brief, said in a blog posting.
He said it was surprising and gratifying how quickly tech companies chimed in to oppose the policy.
But those who back Mr. Trump’s order say companies are trying to intervene in an area of law that traditionally has been left to Congress and the president, and where businesses have little ground to make demands.
“It is absolutely absurd on its face that they have any right to bring people in,” said Rosemary Jenks, government relations manager at NumbersUSA, which wants a crackdown on immigration.
Judge James L. Robart sparked the courtroom showdown with his striking order late Friday putting most of Mr. Trump’s vetting policy on hold. Other courts had issued more restrained orders, and one federal judge in Boston issued a full ruling siding with Mr. Trump.
Judge Robart, however, halted Mr. Trump’s 90-day pause on accepting visitors from seven majority-Muslim countries and his 120-day pause on the U.S. refugee program.
The case has quickly become a major battleground, not only between Mr. Trump and his Democratic opponents in Washington, but also for the array of anti-Trump forces across the country who have vowed to “resist” the administration at every turn.
Ironically, some of the same tech CEOs who are part of Mr. Trump’s economic advisory council are now trying to sue him over his vetting order.
Tesla, run by Elon Musk, joined the campaign against Mr. Trump on Monday, bringing the total number of objecting companies to 127.
Bill Magnuson, co-founder and CEO at Appboy, said Mr. Trump’s order broke with American values of inclusivity and diversity.
“The impacts of the order are negative for both society and businesses as a whole when it comes to recruiting, hiring and retaining some of the world’s best talent,” he said.
A number of other tech companies didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Washington Times.
The Service Employees International Union also filed briefs arguing that workers are being hurt by the Trump policies. The union highlighted a series of cases it said were affected, including Iraqi refugees and a Somali woman, “Nadia,” who is a U.S. citizen but who hopes to marry a Yemeni man.
“Nadia has been unable to see her fiance, whom she misses dearly, due to the expense of flying to Saudi Arabia,” the union said in its brief. “Nadia’s fiance is really frightened that he will not be able to see her again, and upset that he is unable to move to the U.S. and start a life with Nadia.”
The fight against the Trump order marks the latest instance in which tech companies and labor unions have argued for a more lenient immigration policy.
In 2013, they banded together to try to get Congress to pass a broad legalization bill that would have granted a pathway to citizenship to as many as 8 million illegal immigrants.
Public colleges are also being brought into the fight. Washington and Minnesota state governments argue that foreign students who had been approved to study could be kept out — or could be prevented from going home then coming back.
Dozens of law professors also filed an amicus brief arguing that thousands of university students would not be able to travel to the United States for school and that the executive order constituted a violation of nonimmigrants’ due process rights and a violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
“Nonimmigrants who have been granted visas and are already living in the United States have due process rights to stay here; those who are abroad have a due process interest in proper adjudication of their rights to be in the United States,” the law professors wrote.
That argument proved persuasive for Judge Robart, who said the Trump executive order inflicted damage “upon the operations and missions of their public universities and other institutions of higher learning.”
• Andrea Noble contributed to this report.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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