Thousands of Google employees protested outside their offices on Monday against President Donald Trump's controversial executive order banning entry of immigrants from several Muslim countries.
Nearly 2,000 employees participated in these protests that were spread across several Google offices, including Mountain View, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. Several Google employees posted the photos of protest on their twitter account with #GooglersUnite.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai and co-founder Sergey Brin addressed a rally in the company's Mountain View campus. Pichai, who himself is an immigrant, stated that the immigration issue is a non-negotiable issue.
"This is something, there are some values and it's something you should never compromise on. The thing we've been debating for the past three days in one of them," Pichai said in his address, as he vowed that "the fight will continue."
The co-founder Brin took an inspiration from his own life as his speech mostly revolved around the 'refugee issue.' The legendry Google founder had landed in U.S as a 'refugee' several decades from Russia, owing to the anti-Semitism movement in the communist country.
Few of the Google employees who have been directly affected by Trump's immigration order also spoke at the rallies. This included Soufi Esmaeilzadeh, a Google product manager, who said that she would not have managed to come back to U.S, if the federal court had not temporarily struck down the order.
The Monday's protest rallies took place barely hours after the company announced that it would form a 'crisis fund' for providing finance to four immigration organizations. This crisis fund is aiming to raise nearly $4 million.
Along with Google, several American tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and Facebook have openly come out against Trump's immigration order. These companies have unilaterally said that this order is against American spirit that has thrived on attracting 'foreign talent' to its soil.
Trump's executive order targets several Muslims countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria and Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia.