抗议特朗普禁穆令，硅谷精英变成革命者
旧金山——硅谷员工出人意料地成了革命者。作为一个群体，他们相对富有，受过良好教育，有良好的人脉关系。
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 Many who populate the world’s richest tech companies will be just fine if the Affordable Care Act is repealed.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.
虽然硅谷的大多数人都支持希拉里·克林顿(Hillary Clinton)，但科技业者并不是特朗普总统政策方针中最明显的靶子。很多人在世界上最富有的科技公司工作，就算《平价医疗费用法案》(Affordable Care Act)被废除也影响不大，而且拟议中的墨西哥边境墙也不会让硅谷的大多数人感到不便。
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.
在特朗普执政期间，科技业者可以享受到意外的好处。他们可以用儿童看护费用抵税，他们的公司或许可以把在外国的利润调拨回本国，并且他们享受的所得税减免可以用来度上一两个豪华假期了。
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.
就一切都是在说明：过去两周席卷硅谷和西雅图的抗议并不是受短期经济利益驱使的。如果你想了解科技业者为什么会选择抗议特朗普对七个穆斯林占多数国家移民的禁令，你需要首先了解美国相对开放的移民政策在科技业的关键作用。
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.
你需要了解为什么科技业者从特朗普的行政命令中，以及他将要采取的其他反移民行动中看到了灾难的迹象：美国将不再是世界上最优秀的发明者的灯塔。
“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.
“作为一种现象，硅谷并非世界的默认状态。”爱尔兰移民约翰·科里森(John Collison)说。他是六年前创办的旧金山支付初创公司Stripe的联合创始人。
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?'”
他说，硅谷可以存在的一个重要原因是，它欢迎来自外面的人。“我前往世界各地，每个其他地方都在问，‘我们如何在伦敦、巴黎、新加坡、澳大利亚复制硅谷?’”
The reason those places have so far failed to create their own indomitable tech hubs is that everyone there wants to come here.
这些地方迄今为止未能最终建起自己的科技中心，原因就是每个人都想去硅谷。
“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.”
“美国吸引了来自世界各地的各种人才，”科里森说。“看看这些全球领先的科技公司，看看有多少是在美国。这不是自然成就的事情，而是因为我们想办法创造了这个引擎，吸引世界上最好最聪明的人来到硅谷。”
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，科里森也说，“我认为这种情况也有点不牢固。”特朗普执政期间，对移民友好的动态可能会发生改变，而这可能会导致美国科技业的毁灭。
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.
对外部人士来说，这可能听起来有点危言耸听，甚至可能是非常自以为是。硅谷也因为大肆宣扬精英管理的开放态度，却在基本的多样化和包容性方面做得不够好而遭到应有的批评。女性和非亚裔少数族裔在该行业员工中仅占很小比例，在管理层和风险投资者中占的比例更小。总而言之，科技行业和几乎其他所有行业一样，由白人男性主导。
And yet even a casual trip through most histories of the technology industry reveals an outsize role played by immigrants.
然而，随便回顾一下科技产业的大部分历史就会发现，移民在其中发挥了非常重要的作用。
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，无党派智库美国政策国家基金会(National Foundation for American Policy)的研究员研究了87个私人控股的美国初创公司，当时这些公司的总价值约为10亿美元或更多。他们发现了一个惊人的现象：其中逾半数的公司是由美国之外的一人或多人创立的。其中71%的公司在重要管理岗位上聘请的是移民。
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.
总的来说，这些公司，包括Uber、特斯拉(Tesla)和Palantir等家喻户晓的公司，为美国经济创造了成千上万个工作机会和上百亿美元。它们的创立者来自世界各地——印度、英国、加拿大、以色列和中国，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.
关于移民为什么在科技行业如此成功有很多解释。很多美国出生的科技工作者指出，美国出生的雇员足以填补很多科技公司的职位空缺。研究者们发现，美国大学的毕业生足以填补科技行业的职位空缺。批评该行业对移民过于友好的人士表示，根源在于钱，科技公司利用H-1B等签证项目，能够以低于美国出生人员的价格雇佣外国员工。
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.
如果说这种批评在科技产业的某些部分是属实的，但它忽略了硅谷顶级公司的情况。对硅谷的一个常见误解是，它像工厂那样运作，按照那种观点，科技公司可以雇佣世界各地的任何人来填补某个职位。
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厂，而是更像运动员团队。他们在寻找勒布朗(LeBrons)和布雷迪(Bradys)，也就是说，他们在寻找世界上最优秀的人，让他们来想出一些全新的、从未有过的玩意，从一开始就完全重新想象各种玩意的用处。
“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.”
“这不是让数十万人加入制造工厂，”云储存公司Box的联合创始人和首席执行官阿隆·列维(Aaron Levie)说，“而是想出一些能够改变一切的点子。”
