Ankita Rao
Trump’s Immigration Policy Threatens Asians Working in Silicon Valley
Asians in Silicon Valley, whether CEOs or undocumented workers, will be impacted by the new policies. In Silicon Valley, where 60 percent of foreign-born individuals hail from India, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other Asian countries, the outcry against President Doanld Trump's anti-immigration stance has been especially high-profile. And the latest immigration rules, rolled out in the last few days, have many communities on edge.
On March 3, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency announced that it would suspend the H-1B visa program, one of the main routes to employment for immigrants sponsored by tech companies. Then Trump signed a new executive order on March 6 banning entry from six countries: Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. These new rules will weaken the Asian community in the US, and its powerful contribution to the technology industry in the US. Throughout 2015, Asians made up 27 percent of the workforce at Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn, and Yahoo (though they were underrepresented in managerial and executive-level positions). In recent years, they've also made gains in the C suite with Google's Indian-born CEO, Sundar Pichai, and Microsoft's Indian-born CEO, Satya Nadella.
Two Months of Internet Blackouts Have Taken a Toll on Kashmir
Earlier in the summer of 2016, the north Indian state of Kashmir was hit with a new wave of riots when young militant leader Burhan Wani was killed by state police. Wani was the controversial head of Hizbul Mujahideen, a group fighting for the state to separate from India. He was embraced as a freedom fighter by many in Kashmir, and considered a terrorist by Indian officials. Kashmiris have been forced to live with regular curfews and military presence in their daily lives. Their mountain and valley homes have been caught in the crosshairs of border wars between India, Pakistan and China for decades. But in moments of peak violence the law enforcement in Kashmir has started wielding a new means of control: mobile and digital blackouts. In a region already complicated by geography and turbulence, the impact of telecommunication blackouts is significant. “There is no getting around the fact that cutting mobile links [and Internet] affects flow of information, from basic human contact to people facing health issues, to the injured—and there are thousands—not being able to reach families,” said Najeeb Mubarki, a journalist in Kashmir.