Your xenophobia is killing us, Silicon Valley warns US Congress

A slew of Silicon Valley leaders have warned US Congress that changes to visa waiver rules for entering the United States are impeding business.

The open letter is signed by more than 30 industry heads including the chairmen, CEOs and founders of Twitter, Paypal, Uber, Pixar, Dropbox, Zynga, Pinterest and eBay, among others. It is titled "Discriminatory travel restrictions: bad for business and for America," and complains about the xenophobic restrictions put in place in December.

"Until now, citizens of the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and others (38 countries in total) enjoyed a reciprocal arrangement to travel visa-free," the letter notes. "The new law ends this right for travelers to the US based on discriminatory criteria. This invites reciprocal measures similarly restricting US citizens traveling to Europe and the other countries, potentially weakening the power of the US passport for millions of US citizens."

The letter has been posted as an online petition by Iranian-American entrepreneur and angel investor Ali Partovi.

The changes to visa waivers were introduced following the Paris and San Bernardino shootings, which led to a generalized fear that individuals from the Middle East – specifically Iran, Iraq and Syria – could carry out terror attacks. The law also bars people that have visited those countries (and Sudan) in the last five years from entering without a visa.

Your parents might be terrorists

The most controversial aspect, however, is that even those with dual citizenship will require a visa. So, for example, the son of Syrian parents would need to get a visa even if they had never been to Syria (or Iran, Iraq or Sudan). Getting a US visa can involve significant paperwork and bureaucratic delay, and so acts as a barrier to commerce.

"Millions of European, Japanese, and Korean citizens travel as employees, customers, and suppliers of American firms," the letter notes. "Requiring many of them to get visas imposes bureaucratic delays on US firms. This reduces the agility and liberty of US firms, makes us less competitive in the global economy, and will ultimately cost jobs."

The letter also makes the case that the new rules are un-American. "We protest this just as vigorously as if Congress had mandated special travel papers for citizens based on their faith or the color of their skin. In the balancing act between fighting terrorism and upholding American liberties, these provisions go too far."

In its place, the letter offers support to a new proposal in Congress called the "Equal Protection in Travel Act," which it says "mitigates these problems."

Blowback

Although we have yet to see tit-for-tat responses, with European countries requiring US citizens to visit embassies to get visas before they are allowed to enter the country, it is common practice – and sometimes the law – to reflect the same restrictions that one country passes on your citizens to citizens of that country. Likewise, the lifting of restrictions from one country is often reflected by the other.

Silicon Valley isn't the only group unhappy with the new rules. The European Union's 29 ambassadors in Washington sent a similar open letter in December warning that the "blanket restriction" would unfairly impact business people, journalists and aid workers. In response, the Obama Administration said it would allow exceptions for those groups, but that they would be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

The ambassadors warned that the rules "could trigger legally mandated reciprocal measures, and would do nothing to increase security, while instead hurting economies on both sides of the Atlantic." ®