Airbnb To Provide Free Housing To Those Affected By Trump’s Immigration Action

Airbnb has announced that they will provide free housing to detainees and travelers who will be affected by Trump’s immigration and refugee ban, CNBC reports. There have been protests from several organizations, communities and individuals over President Trump’s executive orders to temporarily bar immigrants from seven Muslim countries and refugees from entering the Unites States. The order was signed on Friday, January 27, and President Trump has said that this particular order will prohibit radical terrorists from entering the country. But his decision will also consequently put a temporary blanket ban on all refugee trying to enter the United States of America. Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s CEO, took to Twitter on Sunday announcing the decision about the free housing.

“Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US. Stayed tuned for more, contact me if urgent need for housing.”

Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US. Stayed tuned for more, contact me if urgent need for housing

— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) January 29, 2017

The Airbnb CEO released a statement where he openly denounced Trump’s decision, saying that it is not right to deny countries or refugees access into America, urging everyone to stand together with those who are affected. He then elaborated his plan to provide free housing to those who are affected.

“Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone else who needs it in the event they are denied the ability to board a US-bound flight and are not in your city/country of residence. We have 3 million homes, so we can definitely find people a place to stay.”

Since Airbnb is a business that works by temporarily renting houses, it is still unclear how Chesky’s idea would work if the owners of the houses were to raise objections.

Trump’s decision has faced a lot of backlash from tech leaders including the likes of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Lyft CEO Logan Green, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, among others, expressing their disapproval of President Trump’s Refugee Ban and Immigration Restriction.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky also sent an email to all employees of the company, saying that Trump’s new policy was something he completely disagreed with and was something of a direct obstacle to Airbnb’s mission. He elaborated as follows:

“We believe that you should be able to travel to and live in any community around the world. If we want this to be more than just something we put on a plaque, we have to take action. So here is some of the action we are taking.”

Trump’s decision has widely been criticized for being biased against Muslims. One vocal critic of the Trump’s decision has been Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State. Albright, an refugee herself who came to the United States in the late 1940s fleeing Communist persecution, pointed out that “by specifically targeting Muslim-majority countries for these immigration bans, and by expressing a clear preference for refugees who are religious minorities,” it was clear that Trump’s order was biased against the Muslim population.

“And when one faith is targeted, it puts us all at risk.”

President Donald Trump signed the decision which indefinitely bars all Syrian Refugees from entering the U.S. on Friday. He has also signed an order putting a 120-day bar on refugees from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. No visa will be issued to citizens of these Muslim-majority countries for the next 30 days. Trump has called this decision “a measure to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of America,” pointing out that the American people didn’t want them here. He justified his decision as follows.

“We don’t want to admit the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those that support our country and love, deeply, our people.”

I promise that our administration will ALWAYS have your back. We will ALWAYS be with you! pic.twitter.com/D0aOWhOH4X

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2017

[Featured Image by Carl Court/Getty Images]