Several tech companies that are currently protesting President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States supported him in the past. According to a new report, major tech companies had supported Trump after he became president by contributing both cash and services to his inauguration committee.
A Politico report on Tuesday claimed that even the companies that are currently fighting the order legally made major campaign donations for the president’s inauguration.
Microsoft, for example, has 76 employees who have been affected by the order. Late last month, the company’s president Brad Smith even wrote an email to the company staff, offering them “legal advice and assistance.”
“We believe that immigration laws can and should protect the public without sacrificing people’s freedom of expression or religion,” Smith wrote in the letter.
Despite this, according to the Politico report, which cites federal ethics records filed last week, the company donated $250,000 in cash and the same amount in technology and other tools to the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
The report further states, citing sources familiar with the matter, that the search giant Google made an unspecified cash donation and provided a YouTube livestream of the inauguration. The company has around 200 employees who have been affected by the travel ban and CEO Sundar Pichai has come out against the ban.
“It’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues. We’ve always made our view on immigration issues known publicly and will continue to do so,” he stated in an internal memo to employees.
Facebook, meanwhile, did not make any cash donation, but provided Instagram photo booths to entice people to attend the inauguration ceremony. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg had, in a Facebook post, said: “The United States is a nation of immigrants, and we should be proud of that. We should keep the door open to refugees and those who need help.”
Amazon, which has been largely silent on the issue, is also reported to have contributed cash as well as services for the inauguration.
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