A coalition of more than 140 companies and business associations are urging the Supreme Court to reject the Trump administration’s rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and warned the ramifications of ending it would be felt across the economy.
The companies and groups, which include Amazon, Facebook, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the Supreme Court that DACA has benefited not only the 825,000 young people brought to the United States illegally as children and protected from the threat of deportation, but also the broader business community.
“Eliminating DACA will inflict serious harm on U.S. companies, all workers, and the American economy as a whole,” the group wrote in its filing. “Companies will lose valued employees. Workers will lose employers and co-workers.”
The coalition estimates that if DACA, implemented by President Barack Obama in 2012, were to be rolled back, federal tax revenue will decline by up to $90 billion and gross domestic product would lose between $215 billion and $460.3 billion.
Many of the nation’s top companies, including IBM, Walmart, Apple, and Amazon, employ DACA recipients, the group argued, and 6% of the law’s beneficiaries, called “Dreamers,” launched their own businesses after receiving DACA protection. But if the program is ended, companies stand to incur roughly $6.3 billion in costs to replace “Dreamers,” the companies and business groups said.
“Just as DACA sent a powerful message of inclusion, its rescission tells the immigrants who have been integral to the growth and development of our society and economy for decades that they are no longer welcome here,” the coalition argued. “As a result, DACA’s rescission will reduce the future ability of U.S. companies to attract individuals from around the world to support America’s continued economic growth and prosperity.”
The companies also said the Trump administration’s end of DACA was unlawful.
The administration announced it would be rescinding DACA in 2017 and rested its justification for doing so on the belief that the program was created “without proper statutory authority.”
But the move was challenged in federal court, and two federal courts of appeals, as well as a federal district court in New York, ruled against the Trump administration, forcing it to continue accepting renewal applications from “Dreamers” whose protections were set to expire.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the challenges to the president’s DACA rescission Nov. 12, with a decision coming by the end of June.
