Tech leaders need to take some time to think about their role in bringing all this about.
Truth is, we've all known there were serious problems with the H1B visa for some time. It was clearly conceived and sold to the US public (and congress) as a program designed to bring highly skilled workers to the US who would supplement and enhance, not replace and undermine, the existing workforce.
Unfortunately, that's not what happened. Yes, it continued to be used properly some of the time, but abuses of this program were hardly rare and unusual aberrations. We ended up in repeated situations where companies where not just replacing US citizens with H1B workers, but were arm twisting the US workers into training their replacements. Stop and think about this, for a moment. This is a program designed to bring workers who have skills that you can't find among the existing workforce. If the existing workforce must train its replacement, doesn't that demonstrate that the existing workers do have these skills, and their replacements don't?
Did you not see these workers testify in front of congress, after Disney, and Edison, and even UC San Francisco did this? Some of them actually broke down. One of the few who spoke up said he was able to do so because he had no dependents and had given up on working in tech, and felt that because he could speak out, he had to.
And in all of this, we got what I felt were pretty sanctimonious essays from people like Zuckerberg, who were, as far as I can tell, really lobbying for corporate control over the US immigration system. Facebook wasn't arguing for greater freedom to immigrate, they were lobbying for the power to decide who is and isn't allowed to immigrate to the US, and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain.
And in all of this, Trump saw an opportunity. He slammed the H1B (then he flip flopped a bit, then slammed it again). Many of the displaced Disney workers publicly supported Trump.
Now, tech leaders are terribly upset, and are taking a principled stand against Trump's actions. In many ways, I do agree with them, but I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy being on the same side of an issue with Zuckerberg or Brin, at this point. Certainly not after Brin's involvement in the insidious wage-fixing scheme (ugh, did you see those emails?)
There's reason so many Americans were so enraged. I don't at all agree with their choice of president, but why now? Why did it take a Trump administration to get tech leaders, along with their supporters in congress like Zoe Lofgen, to start seriously criticizing this very corrupt program?
Tech leaders: It's time to take some inventory here, folks. As you oppose this new administration, think about what role you might have played in utterly alienating the US public. And be clear, we do need to welcome top talent from around the globe. By supporting a self-serving and corrupt program, and implying that those who opposed you were "anti-immigrant" (when in fact many of us just opposed corporate control over the immigration system, and couldn't support a program that give employers this kind of power over immigrant's lives), you played right into the hands of people who started to see this "anti-immigrant" card as nothing more than a cynical, corporate ploy.
Things are really bad now, and tech leaders, in my opinion, had a great deal to do with it. I think Zuck's and Brin's speeches against Trump are about as helpful as Madonna's, at this point.