Top executives at some of America’s largest companies and business groups denounced the Trump administration’s decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that exempted certain illegal immigrants from America’s immigration laws.
J.P. Morgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon was among the first to voice his opposition to the end of DACA.
“America always has been a country of immigrants,” Dimon said in a statement from the Business Roundtable, a big business pressure group, which he chairs. “And, when people come here to learn, work hard and give back their communities, we should allow them to stay in the United States.”
“Wells Fargo believes young, undocumented immigrants brought to America as children should have an opportunity to stay,” Wells Fargo spokewoman Jennifer Dunn said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “DACA is relevant to our team members and the communities we serve.”
Javier Palomarez, the chief of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, resigned from the president’s National Diversity Coalition group.
“The USHCC vehemently opposes the President’s inhuman and economically harmful decision to terminate DACA,” Palomarez said in a statement.
There is no evidence that terminating DACA, which covered nearly 800,000 illegal immigrants, would economically harm the United States. The U.S. civilian labor force includes around 157,830,000 people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If all DACA immigrants were workers, they would make up about 0.5 percent of the workforce.
Executives from Facebook, Google, and Microsoft also proclaimed their opposition.
“This is a sad day for our country,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.