Apple to Amazon line up against Trump’s immigrant visa ban

Several of nation’s largest tech companies -- including Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft -- are the latest to join the court battle against President Donald Trump’s ban on new visas for temporary foreign workers.

The group asked a court Monday to be allowed to add the industry’s voice to a lawsuit opposing the ban, saying it’s causing “irreparable harm on businesses and the nation’s economy.”

Trump issued a proclamation on June 22 that suspends a host of non-immigrant visa programs, including H-1B visas for high-skill speciality occupations, H-2B visas for nonagricultural workers, and L-1 visas for intra-company transfers.

Among the other tech companies seeking to weigh into the federal court case in Oakland, California, are Adobe Inc, GitHub Inc, Intel Corp, and Microsoft Corp. The 52 companies separately filed a similar request in a challenge to Trump’s actions pending in Washington.

“The president’s suspension of nonimmigrant visa programs, supposedly to ‘protect’ American workers, actually harms those workers, their employers, and the economy,” the group said in its friend-of-the-court filing. “Rather than shielding domestic workers from the threat of foreign competition, the proclamation all but ensures that firms will need to hire abroad to fill highly-skilled positions, for which the domestic demand far exceeds the available supply of workers.”

Separately, Google, Spotify USA Inc and Bloomberg LP submitted a request to add their support for a court order blocking Trump’s policy. Bloomberg News is a unit of Bloomberg LP.

Industry associations, including the US Chamber of Commerce, sued last month to block Trump’s policy. On Friday, 22 states and the District of Columbia filed a brief opposing the administration’s position in the Washington case.