{"id":60290,"date":"2017-02-01T18:52:50","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T18:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nedayegilan.ir\/?p=60290"},"modified":"2017-02-01T18:52:50","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T18:52:50","slug":"u-s-tech-without-iranian-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nedayegilan.ir\/u-s-tech-without-iranian-immigrants\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. tech without Iranian immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"
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ast year, when we were debating whether or not the U.S. should ramp up its acceptance of Syrian refugees, one image of a tech icon went viral, inspiring social media posts, news coverage, and a\u00a0Banksy<\/a>\u00a0tribute. That image was of Steve Jobs with the caption \u201cSteve Jobs was the son of a Syrian refugee.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the image should probably have read \u201cbiological son of a Syrian immigrant,\u201d it put a relatable face on the situation and added tangible stakes. Imagining a U.S. without Syrians is easy if you don\u2019t know any Syrians, but imagining a U.S. without Steve Jobs means bearing the loss of Apple and Pixar\u2019s economic, design, technological, and cultural influences. It would be a veritable alternate timeline.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s new order threatens to cripple immigration from seven countries: Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia. So far, no one\u2019s done a good job of expressing the tech and business costs of what it means to lose the best and brightest from those countries. Instead, we get limp statistics, images of strangers suffering, and vague lamentations like \u201cwe\u2019re losing our values\u201d or \u201cthis will make it harder to hire programmers from abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since I\u2019m an Iranian-American and know the community\u2019s accomplishments well, I\u2019d like to paint a brief picture of what the U.S. tech landscape would look like had Iran been stonewalled over the last few decades. This should give you an idea of what\u2019s at stake (the people below were either born in Iran or had Iranian parents).<\/p>\n