It was only a matter of time before the illegal, erratic, inhumane, and cruel behaviours and policies of the second Trump regime were going to affect the open source world in a possibly very visible way. Christian Hergert, longtime GNOME and Linux contributor, employed by Red Hat, wanted to leave the US with his family and move to Europe, but requests to remain employed by Red Hat were denied. As such, he decided to end his employment at Red Hat and push on with the move. However, without employment, his work on open source software is going to suffer.
While at their in-person visa appointment in Seattle, US border patrol goons shot two people in their hometown of Portland, underlining the urgency with which people might want to consider getting out of the US, even if it means losing employment. Regardless, the end result is that quite a bit of user-facing software that millions of people use every day is going to be affected.
This move also means a professional shift. For many years, I’ve dedicated a substantial portion of my time to maintaining and developing key components across the GNOME platform and its surrounding ecosystem. These projects are widely used, including in major Linux distributions and enterprise environments, and they depend on steady, ongoing care.
For many years, I’ve been putting in more than forty hours each week maintaining and advancing this stack. That level of unpaid or ad-hoc effort isn’t something I can sustain, and my direct involvement going forward will be very limited. Given how widely this software is used in commercial and enterprise environments, long-term stewardship really needs to be backed by funded, dedicated work rather than spare-time contributions.
↫ Christian Hergert
The list of projects for which Hergert is effectively the sole maintainer is long, and if you’re a Linux user, odds are you’re using at least some of them: GNOME’s text editor, GNOME’s terminal, GNOME’s flagship IDE Builder, and tons of lower-level widely-used frameworks and libraries like GtkSourceView, libspelling, libpeas, and countless others. While new maintainers will definitely be found for at least some of these, the disruption will be real and will be felt beyond these projects alone. There’s also the possibility that Hergert won’t be the only prolific open source contributor seeking to leave the US and thus reducing their contributions, especially if a company like Red Hat makes it a policy not to help its employees trying to flee whatever mess the US is in.
Stories like these illustrate so well why the “no politics!” crowd is so utterly misguided. Politics governs every aspect of our lives, especially so if you’re part of a minority group currently being targeted by the largest and most powerful state apparatus in the world, and pretending to be all three wise monkeys at once is not going to make any of that go away. Even if you’re not directly targeted because you’re not transgender, you’re not brown, you’re not an immigrant, or not whatever else they fancy targeting today, the growing tendrils of even an incompetent totalitarian regime will eventually find you and harm you.
More so than any other type of software, open source software is made by real humans, and as these totalitarian tendrils keep growing, more and more of these real humans will be affected, no matter how incompetent these tendrils might be. You can’t run away and hide from that reality, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
“Given how widely this software is used in commercial and enterprise environments, long-term stewardship really needs to be backed by funded, dedicated work rather than spare-time contributions.”
–> Another example of the hypocrisy in the “tech” industry.
If the “chaos” in USA is affecting open-software in a {real, long-term} manner, would/can Europe rise to the occassion and add some stability/maintainability to the open-source ecosystem (at least at the IMPORTANT developer-level) ?
cade117,
Two things
1. That xkcd is pretty much real: https://xkcd.com/2347/
Nobody (companies or otherwise) gives even the smallest amount of thought unless things becomes immediate and personal needs
2. EU? Have you seen EU? As much as they love to talk about things… it would take 18 months for them to give an emergency funding to a project (just this other day I was talking with a friend who is trying to get scholarships for low income high achieving kids in Germany)
US is high speed / high stress. EU is low speed / low stress.
Choose your poison.
I’m at a loss here.
I don’t know the entire circumstances, so trying to decode what is available in that post.
He(?) is an active maintainer in GNOME, and loss of institutional knowledge, nor close personal relationships is never a good thing.
But… (yes there is a but), he seems to choose France for family reasons, and the most important culprits are RedHad that is refusing to sponsor a visa for relocation, and country of France (or maybe EU) that denies US persons long term employment opportunities.
Because, might be insensitive, but one would ask: Why not Canada? Especially French Canada?
Anyway, best of luck to him. Hope he finds more happiness on the other side of the pond.
Living in SE-Asia and West Africa for almost 20 years, I read 3 issues into this:
– maintaining continuous Visa Status/PR in a Foreign country is a hassle (which only seasoned Expats will understand)
– Visa Status/PR is often linked to Employment, which doubles the stake
– US has become rabid (which is a really sad thing to watch) and every expat should prepare for such a scenario (Covid lock-downs, coups, wars, economic.currency breakdown)
Beside that, Christoph’s story looks like a normal “way of life” story to me and I really don’t see who RedHat was to blame here. If one of my employees would like to move on, far away and into different time zone and tax regimes, then I would verify if this made sense to me. And when not, we would have to depart. Normal thing. I am sure, SUSE will happily talk to him soonest.
Andreas Reichel,
Yes, blame might be too strong of a word. However if they truly believed this person was worth keeping, they would definitely sponsor a visa, anywhere in the world.
(I have seen similar things happen in the past)
Why they chose not to sponsor this move?
We can only speculate.
One speculation could be due to the employment laws in France/Germany it’s almost impossible to fire someone (good for the worker) but it makes US comapnies allergic to scaling large in these countries. There are other options they could have considered he could have set up his own company and contract through that.
Anyway Linux was born in Europe, we need a RedHat like company here (SuSE) ?
garybuk,
Yes, but it is a double edged sword.
In other words it needs an asterisk: “good for the worker, who already has a job, but causes some of the highest youth unemployment rate in Europe”
Here it is much easier to hire or fire someone. And gives us almost complete employment. As companies are more willing to take chances on new employees.
It is always a trade-off.
(Germany might be the sole exception. But that is mostly because of their education system tracking people from young age, and assigning them to vocational tracks early on)
> I would verify if this made sense to me. And when not, we would have to depart. Normal thing.
Sure, from the perspective of white-collar men, the only things that matter (actually, that exist) are companies and the individual, so if the individual doesn’t show value (i.e. profit), companies don’t care. Why would they, right? Just because the other side is a human being? Nah…
alternatively he could relocate to Malta and work as a digital nomad? Still needs to be employed but some company could do that.
You can live anywhere where you have Internet access. And freedom. But freedom is even more important.
truthfinder,
Indeed. But where do you move? Authoritarianism is on the rise across the globe. A generation ago was a US invasion of Greenland on anyone’s bingo cards? I’m worried that the deteriorating conditions for democracy will keep spreading and we may be on the precipitous of a new age of imperialism. The superpowers of China, Russia, and the US all show an active interest and the world may end up with fewer places where one can go to be left alone.
truthfinder,
With the increasing amount of “Chinese Great FireWall” style international barriers, unfortunately this might become a thing of the past.
Too many counties started caring about “digital sovereignty”. But that is just a buzzword, manufactured consent, for enacting draconian control over their populations.
Thom Holwerda,
I find the political transformations taking place are pretty scary for democracy and I sympathize with anyone who is going through this sort of life altering decision. However is there any evidence at all that the denied relocation was anything other than a normal business decision? Not everything is about politics and the link didn’t suggest it was. I would probably cite the significant number of layoffs conducted by Bezos at the Washington Post and contributing $75 million for the filming of Melania to be examples of politically motivated pressure..
> Not everything is about politics
Not everything is about politics, but almost every decision is political.
Calling something “a normal business decision” usually means “without taking into account context from outside the company”.
Serafean,
Private company aren’t responsible for the trump administration though. Is there any direct link showing redhat donated to trump’s campaign or something similar?
Yes Private Large Companies and Citizens United are responsible for Trump. Companies wanted their Tax Cut and they got it.
Seems IBM the owner of Red Hat, did not donate to Trump’s election Campaign, but IBM did donate to Trump’s Ballroom:
https://atr.org/trumpaccounts/
In anycase, Trump has damaged the US lead in Science and Tech and boosted China’s Research Industries.
China will own mRNA research, that will soon be leading i EV and they are poring billions into Tech. The US, cutting billions from research. The 21st and 22nd Centuries will be China’s unless Trump is stopped this very second.
jmc,
I’m not sure if you posted the correct link? It says “Details also forthcoming from: … IBM” but doesn’t otherwise list anything.
I also think Trump’s policies are harming the US and our allies. Unjustified military conquest threats are irreparably damaging our relationships with close allies. And although companies love the money for nothing corporate tax deals that republicans have been pushing through congress, it has come at great cost to the rest of us in the working class. Furthermore the incentives ultimately deteriorate the competitiveness of our industries. Tariffs are burdening everyone with higher costs while simultaneously making our industries even less competitive on the world stage. Worse yet, Trump’s jealously of Obama and Biden has lead him to stupidly sabotage the very industries that are positioned for future growth where the US are falling behind.
Unfortunately things have to get extremely bad before voters consider actually voting against their own party.’s corruption. The GOP has been very successful at blaming everyone other than themselves for their policy failures and hatred is a very powerful motivator. Frankly they’ve mastered selling votes on hatred. Meanwhile the broad population seems to have forgotten the lessons of allowing authoritarians to hold power and we could end up loosing democracy because of this.
Years ago (about 2010 ?) I remember a military guy in USA (Westpoint graduate) mentioned that ….. till 1990’s USA had a good lead in many military-related STEM fields, Later this lead had decayed (years before Trump appeared).
Related to the decay was more STEM-related PhD’s were being pumped out by Russia/China.
> Private company aren’t responsible for the trump administration though
They are. IBM might not, but that wasn’t my point anyway.
The decision to not help this man continue with his public benefit work will have ramifications far wider than within IBM itself. That makes this a political decision.
A second way it’s political is that he’s fleeing due to the internal political climate, and the company not helping him makes it at best indifferent, at worst supportive of or complicit in those policies. The fact that the verdict took months means it wasn’t a clear cut internal policy.
Serafean,
Absolutely not. I am unambiguously on the record as being against what the Trump administration are doing and I’m not a particular fanboy of IBM either, but I do run a business and frankly I don’t find it fair at all to be held responsible for policies I had no hand in passing or enforcing. Given extremely recent global layoffs at IBM, it stands to reason that employees are just in a weak position to be making demands.
For all we know the managers at IBM dislike what ICE are doing as much as we do. And it sounds like managers did place calls to other branches in the company. They may have genuinely been trying to assist in relocating the employee but run into obstacles related to the ongoing hiring freeze and layoffs. Oversea managers may not have been in a position to pick up new employees even as a favor. To project politics into their decision without any evidence that it was political is not a reasonable thing to do. Even the employee isn’t accusing IBM of making it political. So I don’t see why any of us should be jumping to that conclusion other than because we want to turn non-political decisions into political ones.
Serafean,
Let me ask this hypothetical. What if IBM had approved the transfer and then laid off the employee after relocating? Timing-wise this may have been the reality of what was happening on the ground. Would that have been better in your eyes?
Too nested, can’t reply to Alfman. So here goes:
> I do run a business and frankly I don’t find it fair at all to be held responsible for policies I had no hand in passing or enforcing.
I said “IBM might not” (be responsible), and I am not saying they were. But the in general the big tech industry was supportive, and is thus responsible. But as mentioned previously: this is absolutely irrelevant for my argument.
> To project politics into their decision without any evidence that it was political is not a reasonable thing to do.
You keep reading it the opposite way : I am not saying it was a decision based on (the country’s) politics. I am saying that this decision will have political ramifications which probably have not been taken into account. Thus it is a political decision but with politics as its consequence, not as its cause.
Laying off a janitor is far smaller in consequences than this major GNOME developer, but both affect the world outside of the company, and IMO any company should be held accountable for those consequences.
In Europe we have mandatory social payments that go to pay unemployment benefits down the road. That’s good enough accountability for the case of the janitor. (sorry janitors)
> And it sounds like managers did place calls to other branches in the company.
I’m not singling anyone out, I’m saying the organization didn’t have it in itself to find a way to keep this guy doing the arguably societally very useful work he did under new circumstances.
> What if IBM had approved the transfer and then laid off the employee after relocating?
That would have been a major dick move, this time on a personal level. And with hilarious consequences if done in France. Prud’hommes would’ve had a field day with that.
Serafean,
I disagree with you semantically. The way I would word your point if I were making it is that “non-policial decisions can still have political consequences”.
You are making an assumption that the company needs the developer more than the janitor, but that’s not a given. Perhaps there are more redundancies in the developer ranks and no redundancies in the janitor ranks.
Talented people loose their jobs all the time, sometimes by the thousands. Redundancies are a tough reality for modern corporations.
Yes of course, it would have been a dick move! The transfer request might have even made it up the chain to someone who was privy to the upcoming layoffs before they were announced and couldn’t even warn the employee not to transfer.
Alfman,
> The way I would word your point if I were making it is that “non-policial decisions can still have political consequences”.
You may, but then you reduce the world view down to the company’s internals again. I say those political/social consequences should be taken account when making those decisions.
> You are making an assumption that the company needs the developer more than the janitor, but that’s not a given.
No I’m not. I don’t care about the needs of the company at all in this argument. My argument is about the wide boundary consequences. I’m saying that one person out of work, whose work affects at best hundreds in a single building, who also probably could take mops into their hands is far less socially disruptive than a person whose work affects millions without the possibility of doing the work themselves.
> Talented people loose their jobs all the time
Not arguing about this individual, but about the social usefulness of his work: They’ve been at it for months, and there is no public path forward for those projects. Both keeping this person on or a managed handover would’ve been fine by me. This goes back to the above argument: one person out of work vs dozens of unmaintained projects used by millions.
Now, arguing about this individual: Not helping him in the current political climate makes the company indifferent.
And now the deeply personal view: Indifferent in this case means supportive. The time for wait and see is over.
> the upcoming layoffs
If he was on the shortlist for firing anyway, see my argument about social usefulness and multiply it by a 1000.
Serafean,
On a basic level I don’t have a problem with managers doing favors for employees. sukru made the point before that companies do go out of their way to attract and retain employees when the business demand is high, but it wasn’t the case here with pending layoffs. What you are suggesting or at least implying is that employees are entitled to a job even when the business demand for them is low or non-existent. Naturally you’re allowed to have this world view, but it’s obviously not free market capitalism.
Not for nothing, but imposing your own valuation of a need when someone else pays the salary is problematic. By that logic, why shouldn’t you be forced to pay the salary of an accountant (for example) who you’ve decided that you no longer need.. I say your financial situation doesn’t matter and your needs don’t matter, only the “social usefulness of his work” matters. You may complain about loosing money on expensive labor you no longer need, but remember your opinion doesn’t matter in this decision, only mine does. Your responsibility is to uphold my opinion of what a skill should be valued at. You may think you need someone to help rake leaves and shovel snow, but I’m telling you the account’s skills are more socially useful, and therefor it’s more important that you keep paying the accountant than for low skill labor.
BTW I’m not using sarcasm to be rude, but just to make a point in hopes that you’ll agree it’s a tad ridiculous.
Alfman,
> What you are suggesting or at least implying is that employees are entitled to a job even when the business demand for them is low or non-existent.
No, I’m implying that there are types of work that must not stop being done.
In part one of my argument I don’t care about the individual employee or company, but about the social utility of the work that’s being done and the broad consequences if the work stops being done.
Whether or not the 16 projects this person was maintaining must not stop being maintained is another discussion, the reality remains that this software is used by millions, and will now stop being maintained (in the short term) without a transition plan in place -> broad consequences ignored.
The transition plan could have been as little as “I’ll stop being active in a few months, start organizing”, but this sounds like an immediate cut.
> By that logic, why shouldn’t you be forced to pay the salary of an accountant (for example) who you’ve decided that you no longer need.
This is part two of my argument, where I do care about the individual employee, and the social consequences of that individual not having a job.
I covered that situation in a previous post: “In Europe we have mandatory social payments that go to pay unemployment benefits down the road.”
So while employed I am “forced” to pay “the salary” (60%, for half a year) of anyone a random company decided it didn’t need anymore. And I do it gladly, because I know it will cover me too if I ever need it.
In this concrete example I do take the view that not helping him relocate while remaining employed is implicitly taking side with the Trump administration.
> the account’s skills are more socially useful
This is the crux of the misunderstanding (at least one of them) : I’m not talking about the social utility of a particular skill or person or company, but of the concrete work that skill is being applied to, and the social/political consequences if that work stops being done without at least a transition plan being in place. Think nuclear waste management as an extreme example.
In this case, if he was on the shortlist of being fired, giving the community a few months heads up would’ve been the responsible thing to do, and the bare minimum. For the concrete individual losing a job, see “social payments” part.
side note:
My 10 years as a corporate drone were (by my measure) absolutely wasted in regard to making the world suck less, but it paid the bills nicely, and for the first 6 years I had a lot of fun.
Serafean,
And who’s going to foot the bill for that? Someone else and not you?
I appreciate the lesson on European safety-nets, which I’m not familiar with. Although it seems that you may not have been aware that the US has this too. Workers at large companies typically get some severance when they are laid off.
I found a link comparing IBM severance to other companies.
https://fired.fyi/blog/ibm-layoffs-2025
Once that runs out they can apply for government unemployment benefits that employers are also required to pay into.
Not really. The fact that IBM laid off these employees does not logically imply any such thing. At best I could accept the argument as a hypothetical where IBM sides with ICE. Non-hypothetically though you haven’t established a factual basis for it and for all we know the managers may dislike the trump administration’s policies as much as you. There’s no indication, even from the employee’s own account, that the termination has anything whatsoever to do with IBM supporting ICE.
You did talk about the social utility of this particular worker at this particular company. Regardless though I think that making companies directly responsible for societal problems outside the company instead of a more appropriate organizations makes me very squeamish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
Alfman,
> And who’s going to foot the bill for that? Someone else and not you?
Well that’s the entire problem of FLOSS and our entire software industry being based on free (as in beer) software, isn’t it? (Assuming you’re in IT now) Do you pay for Linux development? GLibc? GCC? NTP?
Do you directly pay for roads, sewer lines, the experts writing regulation that removes lead from the environment? We’re all footing the bill for all of this one cent at a time.
For instance I was indirectly paying for this person because the Ministry of Finance of my country uses an IBM solution. (they’re weaning themselves off of it)
> I appreciate the lesson on European safety-nets
That wasn’t the intention, the intention was to show that the social cost of a laid off worker is paid for by an existing mechanism. For considering the cost paid, the mechanism must be mandatory, and have reasonable rules to prevent most misuse by workers and employers alike.
> The fact that IBM laid off these employees does not logically imply any such thing.
Correct, I am not claiming logic in this case.
I am of the belief that the situation there seems to be at a point where taking a stand seems to be necessary. I’d quote the “First They Came” poem, but you get the gist.
> making companies directly responsible for societal problems outside the company instead of a more appropriate organizations makes me very squeamish.
Not making responsible, holding responsible/accountable. Very different.
> You did talk about the social utility of this particular worker at this particular company.
Yes, on the assumption of the utility of maintaining those projects. And of this particular worker because of my bias of wanting the employer to take a stand.
Serafean,
I share your value for FOSS and agree than funding it is a challenge. Frequently I work on bugs and offer support for others for free. I know that cash is king, frankly though I don’t have much of it to give away.
Depends on if you count taxes or not. Some of those things like sewer lines can have specific line items for them, which homeowners pay for. Roads are sometimes paid directly via tolls, and other times paid indirectly via gas taxes.
We could debate whether taxes should be collected for FOSS. This topic should probably be saved for a different time though, haha.
Sorry I am having trouble following how unemployment insurance is supposed to be connected to work that must not stop being done (in your view)?
Sure, there were tens of thousands of employees laid off in just this instance and it’s certainly worth debating the ethical implications of a society that normalizes this.
I didn’t think the word was the issue so much as being held accountable for things that someone else is technically doing. Regardless, perhaps we are ready to agree to disagree?
Yeah, many of us feel this way. It is especially depressing to witness so many companiesinstitutions caving to political pressure. Alas the federal government has so many levers to withhold hundreds of millions in funds, revoke VISAs, change tax status, even doxing & blackmail, etc. Times are scary.
Alfman,
Especially when it is IBM/RedHat we are talking about. They are now known to be effective or compassionate.
And this is nowhere near the top of “cruelest” IBM decisions, the internet is full of stories where they backstabbed their employees just to save a dime.
sukru,
That doesn’t surprise me. IBM/RH, were already under pressure to cut global staffing.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/04/ibm-layoffs-fourth-quarter.html
Employees may not have as much leverage and flexibility in 2026.
https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/corporate-america-continues-job-cuts-2026-efficiency-push-2026-02-06/
I predict the layoffs will continue and that profits could actually increase while the companies get by using fewer employees than they required in years past.
Alfman,
You would not be surprised to hear me detesting layoffs (except in extreme necessity, like near bankruptcy, or truly exiting a market).
What happened to Google after they subject 12,000 of us to layoffs?
Their stock price nor their profits showed any “returns” for that.
They once again became a powerhouse only after one of the founders, Sergey, came back, and personally took the helm of Gemini and all intelligence related stuff.
Them once again embracing original ideals (at least some of them) was successful. “Nano Banana Pro”, the interim management would never allow such a childish name. Something more sterile like “Google Assistant Pro Intelligent Image Generation 2.0” would be used instead.
Saving money on salaries will not save a company. But building truly exceptional products will.
sukru,
I’d say that’s more true in young & growing markets. But there’s simply less of a need for those employees in a mature market where the dominant players are solidly cemented in place and there isn’t much more room for new growth. So we see a shift away from innovation and competition and towards rent seeking and squeezing the cash cow instead. We’ve seen this pattern in google, microsoft, apple, etc. As a consumer, this has got to be the most boring phase of the market. And for better or worse it is sustainable; the incumbents can retain control over their respective markets indefinitely without ceding an opening to new competition (absent the intervention of an anti-trust authority to break up market control).
It really takes a new market to encourage spending, as evidenced by AI. But in old markets, we should expect cutbacks until there’s little more than a skeleton crew operating the ship. Advertising, though extremely profitable, no longer warrants paying so many employees.
BTW this probably comes across as more callous than I intended…
Employees bring good ideas and skills to the table and many are eager to contribute to improving products. But they may have lost value compared to corporate growth expectations, which is how employers justify their employment. Once a company has grown as big as they can expect to become in a given market, shareholders may find it unnecessary to continue paying for as many employees as before when the company was still growing.
The best opportunities have always been in new markets. Throughout modern history we’ve always had the fortune of new markets to move forward with, but it makes me wonder what lies ahead. Will we reach a steady state end game where there are no more new markets? Just old markets run by all powerful incumbents?
Alfman,
That is precisely the reason for their downfall, or at least being lost in obscurity.
The only reason dinosaurs like IBM, Oracle or SAP are still relevant is organizational resistance. It is slow and expensive for a customer to move to a competitor. And to be honest, these companies spend significant amount of resources, legal, and “on the boundary” and lost of backroom deals to ensure failure of such moves. (Vendor lock-in)
That being said, by losing their innovative edges, they lost the race to the desktop, internet, social media, and now AI (only Oracle managed to barge in, and that was with excessive government “nudging”)
In any case, it might be better for those high achieving employees in these companies to move on. When I was in Google, back then most of my team was ex-Yahoo. They basically moved that entire group, and the talent to a greener field (and were successful in bringing people up to date, unbiased news, while also protecting the publisher economy, … long story)
sukru,
What you call a downfall is what happens when one enters a mature market. When you’re at the top innovation is no longer rewarded with more growth, only extra costs. Mix this reality with wall street expectations and you end up with companies turning into lame incumbents focusing on protecting their kingdom & cash cows. We are seeing this become the norm. You might call it “obscurity”, but the thing is even lame incumbents that turn out this way still can and do end up controlling markets long term. New markets are typically up for grabs, old ones however are very difficult to take away.
Yes exactly. Those are the stereotypical examples of tech dinosaurs, but this is what will happen to “modern” tech companies as well. Some could manage a transition into a new market but there have been lots of false starts, like VR goggles, that didn’t prove to be that popular with consumers.
Of course, but it goes back to my question of whether the world has an infinite supply of new markets to migrate to,
This is where my thinking goes off into a philosophical tangent. The past two centuries have seen so much technological innovation compared to all of history. Electronics in particular opened up so many doors. Can the future repeat this burst or are we destined for diminishing returns as we get further?
I’m saving champaign for when (or if) we become a type II civilization 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
Alfman,
The markets can always surprise us in “unknown unknown” ways.
The only blockers are true societal threats, like all out wars, totalitarianism or full AI takeover.
The desire to relocate was.
paisley,
Sure, but that was the employee’s decision, not redhat’s.
Enforcing a misdemeanor with death is not quite enforcing the law. If anyone is out of touch, it is you.
It’s not even a misdemeanor, it’s an administrative infraction. The person you replied to knows this and is just a troll trying to get a rise out of sensible people.
American tech jobs are not a universal human right. He picked his family over living here and working for Red Hat, and now he has to deal with that decision.
Being an immigrant living in the Seattle area that has gone to the USCIS office many times, I found this odd:
I think I would’ve heard about this.
And indeed, the original article is refereencing a shooting that happened in Portland:
I only mention this because accurate reporting is important, otherwise it gives people something to grab on to claim “fake news”.