Your comment is quite ironic to me: I am arranging my affairs so that if I am denied re-entry I can simply pick up somewhere else. (It's rather unlikely I'll be actually expelled).
Wait, what? Why should some guy who's had a green card for decades, and doesn't even speed while driving, worry? Who typically avoids making statements interpreted politically (this is an exception)?
It's because of the arbitrariness of the law. As someone foreign-born, with a south asian parent, and from time to time a startup tech CEO in Silicon Valley I win the Bannon trifecta. It doesn't matter how many jobs I've created over the years, or wealth for that matter: I would be a fool not to plan ahead.
> we (mostly) get along
Americans are typically super-nice people, unusually so. But recent actions have been...discouraging. The political rhetoric and action look different to someone in my position.
And the often-cited quasi-get-out-of-jail card is to become a US citizen. Well seriously: do you really want to affirmatively join a country if your only way to keep your human rights is to make a loyalty oath? And will it? It's not like the US has always treated its citizens humanely either. If things have really gotten to that point the better thing to do is just leave and create wealth and jobs elsewhere.
Don't get me wrong, I love working in Silicon Valley. But I can no longer afford to place all my bets here.
The first reason is practicality. As Trump cracks down on H1B visas, immigrating will become even more difficult than it currently is.
The second reason is safety. Of course NYC/SF/LA are fine... But elsewhere in the country there is a rising tide of hate against Middle Easterns. In February, two Indian engineers working at Garmin were murdered in a Kansas bar [1] because a man mistook them for Iranians.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Olathe,_Kansas_shooting