抗議特朗普禁穆令，硅谷精英變成革命者

SAN FRANCISCO — The workers of Silicon Valley make unlikely revolutionaries. As a group, they are relatively wealthy, well educated and well connected.

舊金山——硅谷員工出人意料地成了革命者。作為一個群體，他們相對富有，受過良好教育，有良好的人脈關系。

While most here supported Hillary Clinton, tech workers are not the most obvious targets of President Donald Trump’s policy ideas. Many who populate the world’s richest tech companies will be just fine if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. Most will not be personally inconvenienced by the proposed Mexican border wall.

雖然硅谷的大多數(shù)人都支持希拉里·克林頓(Hillary Clinton)，但科技業(yè)者并不是特朗普總統(tǒng)政策方針中最明顯的靶子。很多人在世界上最富有的科技公司工作，就算《平價醫(yī)療費用法案》(Affordable Care Act)被廢除也影響不大，而且擬議中的墨西哥邊境墻也不會讓硅谷的大多數(shù)人感到不便。

Under Trump, tech workers could enjoy a windfall. They may get tax credits for child care costs, their companies may be allowed to repatriate foreign profits, and their coming income tax cuts might fund a luxury vacation or two.

在特朗普執(zhí)政期間，科技業(yè)者可以享受到意外的好處。他們可以用兒童看護費用抵稅，他們的公司或許可以把在外國的利潤調(diào)撥回本國，并且他們享受的所得稅減免可以用來度上一兩個豪華假期了。

This is all by way of saying: The protests that swept through Silicon Valley and Seattle in the last two weeks were not motivated by short-term financial gain. If you want to understand why tech employees went to the mat against Trump’s executive order barring immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, you need to first understand the crucial role that America’s relatively open immigration policies play in the tech business.

就一切都是在說明：過去兩周席卷硅谷和西雅圖的抗議并不是受短期經(jīng)濟利益驅(qū)使的。如果你想了解科技業(yè)者為什么會選擇抗議特朗普對七個穆斯林占多數(shù)國家移民的禁令，你需要首先了解美國相對開放的移民政策在科技業(yè)的關鍵作用。

And you need to understand why people in tech see something cataclysmic in Trump’s executive order, and in the other immigration crackdowns waiting in the wings: the end of America’s standing as a beacon for the world’s best inventors.

你需要了解為什么科技業(yè)者從特朗普的行政命令中，以及他將要采取的其他反移民行動中看到了災難的跡象：美國將不再是世界上最優(yōu)秀的發(fā)明者的燈塔。

“Silicon Valley is unlikely, as a phenomenon — it is not the default state of the world,” said John Collison, an immigrant from Ireland who is a co-founder of Stripe, a six-year-old payments startup based in San Francisco.

“作為一種現(xiàn)象，硅谷并非世界的默認狀態(tài)。”愛爾蘭移民約翰·科里森(John Collison)說。他是六年前創(chuàng)辦的舊金山支付初創(chuàng)公司Stripe的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人。

One important reason Silicon Valley can exist at all, he said, is that it is welcoming to people from far outside its borders. “I go all across the world, and every other place is asking, ‘How do we replicate Silicon Valley where we are — in London, in Paris, in Singapore, in Australia?'”

他說，硅谷可以存在的一個重要原因是，它歡迎來自外面的人。“我前往世界各地，每個其他地方都在問，‘我們?nèi)绾卧趥惗亍屠?、新加坡、澳大利亞復制硅?’”

The reason those places have so far failed to create their own indomitable tech hubs is that everyone there wants to come here.

這些地方迄今為止未能最終建起自己的科技中心，原因就是每個人都想去硅谷。

“The U.S. is sucking up all the talent from all across the world,” Collison said. “Look at all the leading technology companies globally, and look at how overrepresented the United States is. That’s not a normal state of affairs. That’s because we have managed to create this engine where the best and the brightest from around the world are coming to Silicon Valley.”

“美國吸引了來自世界各地的各種人才，”科里森說。“看看這些全球領先的科技公司，看看有多少是在美國。這不是自然成就的事情，而是因為我們想辦法創(chuàng)造了這個引擎，吸引世界上最好最聰明的人來到硅谷。”

But, Collison added, “I think that’s kind of fragile.” Under Trump, the immigrant-friendly dynamic could change — and it could bring about the ruin of U.S. tech.

但是，科里森也說，“我認為這種情況也有點不牢固。”特朗普執(zhí)政期間，對移民友好的動態(tài)可能會發(fā)生改變，而這可能會導致美國科技業(yè)的毀滅。

To outsiders, this may sound alarmist, and perhaps more than a little self-righteous. Silicon Valley gets rightly rapped for talking a big game on its supposed meritocratic openness while failing on basic measures of diversity and inclusion. Women and non-Asian minorities make up a tiny fraction of the industry’s employees, and an even smaller portion of its executives and venture capitalists. In short, the tech industry is in thrall to white dudes as much as just about any other business.

對外部人士來說，這可能聽起來有點危言聳聽，甚至可能是非常自以為是。硅谷也因為大肆宣揚精英管理的開放態(tài)度，卻在基本的多樣化和包容性方面做得不夠好而遭到應有的批評。女性和非亞裔少數(shù)族裔在該行業(yè)員工中僅占很小比例，在管理層和風險投資者中占的比例更小。總而言之，科技行業(yè)和幾乎其他所有行業(yè)一樣，由白人男性主導。

And yet even a casual trip through most histories of the technology industry reveals an outsize role played by immigrants.

然而，隨便回顧一下科技產(chǎn)業(yè)的大部分歷史就會發(fā)現(xiàn)，移民在其中發(fā)揮了非常重要的作用。

Last year, researchers at the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank, studied the 87 privately held American startups that were then valued at $1 billion or more. They discovered something amazing: More than half of them were founded by one or more people from outside the United States. And 71 percent of them employed immigrants in crucial executive roles.

去年，無黨派智庫美國政策國家基金會(National Foundation for American Policy)的研究員研究了87個私人控股的美國初創(chuàng)公司，當時這些公司的總價值約為10億美元或更多。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個驚人的現(xiàn)象：其中逾半數(shù)的公司是由美國之外的一人或多人創(chuàng)立的。其中71%的公司在重要管理崗位上聘請的是移民。

Collectively, these companies, which include householdish names like Uber, Tesla and Palantir, had created thousands of jobs and added billions of dollars to the U.S. economy. Their founders came from all over the world — India, Britain, Canada, Israel and China, among lots and lots of other points around the globe.

總的來說，這些公司，包括Uber、特斯拉(Tesla)和Palantir等家喻戶曉的公司，為美國經(jīng)濟創(chuàng)造了成千上萬個工作機會和上百億美元。它們的創(chuàng)立者來自世界各地——印度、英國、加拿大、以色列和中國，以及世界各地的其他很多地方。

There are many theories for why immigrants find so much success in tech. Many U.S.-born tech workers point out that there is no shortage of U.S.-born employees to fill the roles at many tech companies. Researchers have found that more than enough students graduate from American colleges to fill available tech jobs. Critics of the industry’s friendliness toward immigrants say it comes down to money — that technology companies take advantage of visa programs, like the H-1B system, to get foreign workers at lower prices than they would pay U.S.-born ones.

關于移民為什么在科技行業(yè)如此成功有很多解釋。很多美國出生的科技工作者指出，美國出生的雇員足以填補很多科技公司的職位空缺。研究者們發(fā)現(xiàn)，美國大學的畢業(yè)生足以填補科技行業(yè)的職位空缺。批評該行業(yè)對移民過于友好的人士表示，根源在于錢，科技公司利用H-1B等簽證項目，能夠以低于美國出生人員的價格雇傭外國員工。

But if that criticism rings true in some parts of the tech industry, it misses the picture among Silicon Valley’s top companies. One common misperception of Silicon Valley is that it operates like a factory; in that view, tech companies can hire just about anyone from anywhere in the world to fill a particular role.

如果說這種批評在科技產(chǎn)業(yè)的某些部分是屬實的，但它忽略了硅谷頂級公司的情況。對硅谷的一個常見誤解是，它像工廠那樣運作，按照那種觀點，科技公司可以雇傭世界各地的任何人來填補某個職位。

But today’s most ambitious tech companies are not like factories. They’re more like athletic teams. They’re looking for the LeBrons and Bradys — the best people in the world to come up with some brand-new, never-before-seen widget, to completely re-imagine what widgets should do in the first place.

但是如今，大部分雄心勃勃的科技公司都不像工廠，而是更像運動員團隊。他們在尋找勒布朗(LeBrons)和布雷迪(Bradys)，也就是說，他們在尋找世界上最優(yōu)秀的人，讓他們來想出一些全新的、從未有過的玩意，從一開始就完全重新想象各種玩意的用處。

“It’s not about adding tens or hundreds of thousands of people into manufacturing plants,” said Aaron Levie, the co-founder and chief executive of the cloud-storage company Box. “It’s about the couple ideas that are going to be invented that are going to change everything.”

“這不是讓數(shù)十萬人加入制造工廠，”云儲存公司Box的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人和首席執(zhí)行官阿隆·列維(Aaron Levie)說，“而是想出一些能夠改變一切的點子。”