Tech leaders from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to Google’s Sundar Pichai called on Trump and Congress to preserve DACA and pass legislation protecting DREAMers.
SAN FRANCISCO — The technology industry is fighting President Trump’s plan to mothball a program that allows young people who were brought to the U. S. illegally as children to remain here, opening yet another front in an increasingly tense relationship with the White House.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, is an Obama administration program that allows nearly 800,000 “DREAMers, ” young undocumented immigrants, to work and study legally in the U. S.
Trump is expected to announce Friday whether he will end DACA or let the program gradually expire. Under the program, DREAMers can remain in the U. S. until their work permits expire. The work permits must be renewed every two years.
On Thursday night, tech leaders from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to Google’s Sundar Pichai sent a letter to Trump and congressional leaders.
“We call on President Trump to preserve the DACA program. We call on Congress to pass the bipartisan DREAM Act or legislation that provides these young people raised in our country the permanent solution they deserve, ” the letter sent through FWD.us, a pro-immigration group co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg.
In a separate blog post, the Facebook co-founder and CEO wrote: “We need a government that protects Dreamers.”
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Microsoft urged Trump not to pull the plug on the program, saying 27 of its employees could be affected. Among them are software engineers, finance professionals and retail and sales associates, Microsoft said.
“Ending DACA will drastically disrupt the lives of these individuals who willingly came forward to register with the federal government. They could lose their jobs and risk deportation, ” Brad Smith, the company’s president and chief legal officer, said in a blog post Thursday.
Ending DACA could endanger 700,000 jobs, according to research released this week by FWD.us, a pro-immigration group co-founded by Zuckerberg, and the Center for American Progress, with data from the Cato Institute. Some 91% of DACA recipients are employed. If Trump ends the program, 1,400 people of them will lose their ability to work each business day, the research found.
The tech industry has already clashed with the Trump administration on immigration. It’s a hot-button issue for an industry which relies heavily on foreign workers.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told Trump his administration needed to show “more heart” on immigration, including DACA, during a meeting at the White House in June.
Some multinationals are making contingency plans to move vulnerable workers to overseas locations, according to news site Axios.
Trump’s relationship with the technology industry and the business community at large is fraying. Business leaders abandoned the president in droves over his response to a deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville.
The DACA program allows young people who arrived by 2007 to remain in the U. S. if they were illegally brought by their parents to the U. S. before they were 16 years old and lived here since then without committing any serious crimes. They must renew their DACA status every two years.
Trump pledged during his campaign to scrap the program, but seemed to have had a change of heart until attorneys general from 10 states urged the White House to let the program lapse or face a challenge in federal court.
