Microsoft Presses for Immigration-Ban Exceptions
February 02 2017 - 12:31PM
Dow Jones News
By Jay Greene
Microsoft Corp. called on the Trump administration to create a
process for granting exceptions to last Friday's executive order on
immigration, the latest step by technology companies to address
challenges posed by the action.
In a letter sent Thursday to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, Microsoft President
and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith pushed for a speedy process to
alleviate the strain on employees separated from families because
of the order.
He said 76 of the company's employees, along with 41 of their
dependents, that hold nonimmigrant visas to live and work in the
U.S. were affected by the executive order, which bars entry to the
U.S. by people from seven majority-Muslim nations out of concerns
about the risk of terrorism.
"We are concerned about families that have been separated as one
or both parents were outside the United States last Friday and
therefore cannot re-enter the country and are stranded away from
their homes," Mr. Smith wrote in the five-page letter. "We are also
concerned about an impacted employee inside the United States with
a desperate need to visit a critically-ill parent abroad."
The executive order includes a clause that gives the two
secretaries the ability to issue visas "on a case-by-case basis,
and when in the national interest," Mr. Smith wrote.
"We therefore believe that the process we are proposing here is
not only consistent with the Executive Order, but was contemplated
by it," he wrote.
Microsoft has been particularly outspoken on the order. Along
with Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc. and others, Microsoft is considering
a joint letter to Mr. Trump opposing the order, and offering to
work with the White House to develop different policies. Microsoft
and Amazon.com Inc. also have offered support for a lawsuit filed
Monday against the order by the Washington state attorney
general.
The executive order is taking a toll on employees who have
already been vetted by government officials. "These are not
situations that law-abiding individuals should be forced to
confront when there is no evidence that they pose a security or
safety threat to the United States, " Mr. Smith wrote.
Write to Jay Greene at Jay.Greene@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 02, 2017 12:16 ET (17:16 GMT)
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