On November 12, there will be a crucial hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court on the DACA (Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals) program, which protects some 700,000 Dreamers in the country, who arrived undocumented as children.
That day, Donald Trump’s government attorneys will present their arguments as to why they want to rescind the program. The attorneys of organizations and individuals will do the same, petitioning for its continuation. In view of all the setbacks in different U.S. courts it faced and that have so far prevented it from eliminating DACA, Trump’s administration turned to the Supreme Court for the program’s review.
In the run-up to the hearing, a long list of personalities and companies have introduced before the Court an appeal called Amicus Curiae (friends of the court), a petition made by third parties, in this particular case to uphold the continuation of DACA. Former national security, foreign policy and intelligence officials and other public servants who have worked on security issues within the U.S. government introduced the brief on October 4th. They use legal, economic, political and diplomatic arguments before the highest court as to why it should not eliminate DACA.
“The rescission of DACA would do grave harm to the security and foreign policy interests of the United States,” says the document signed by former officials Madeleine K. Albright, John O. Brennan, General Michael V. Hayden, John Kerry, and Susan E. Rice.
“First, rescission would have a devastating humanitarian impact on DACA recipients and their families and communities. On average, DACA recipients arrived in the United States at the age of six. Deporting them to places that are unsafe, unfamiliar, and unable to support them would gravely harm these individuals and signal a deep contempt for human rights. (…) This move would embolden other countries to mistreat their own migrants.”
According to the figures in the documents presented to the court, 825,000 Dreamers are registered in the United States. They are the children of immigrants who arrived in the U.S. undocumented. The DACA program, which came into effect in 2012 under Barack Obama, protects them from deportation. Jorge Cancino, immigration journalist at Univision Noticias, explains in an article that some 100,000 Dreamers renounced DACA protection “for various reasons, be it because they did not renew their work permits or because they legalized their stay in the country through other legal channels.” Therefore, he estimates, DACA currently protects a little more than 700,000 Dreamers in the United States.
On September 5, 2017, the Trump government eliminated DACA. He had promised to do so during his electoral campaign. On January 2018, a Federal Court in California court overturned the decision and ordered Homeland Security to reinstate DACA. As Cancino recalls, in February and April 2018 a Brooklyn court and a Washington DC court followed with favorable rulings on DACA. Ten states with Republican governors sued the program in a Federal Court in Houston, as Cancino reports, but that court dismissed the lawsuit. Nearly a year ago, in November 2018, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that Trump could not eliminate DACA and that the September 2017 decision had been “arbitrary, capricious, and not law-abiding,” as quoted by the reporter.
The impact on the stability of the hemisphere is another consequence of eliminating DACA, according to the “friends of the court”. ” The countries to which DACA recipients would be deported are already struggling with deep poverty, crime, and over-whelmed and under-resourced social services. The countries of the Northern Triangle [Central América –El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala] lack the capacity or services to absorb the potential inflow of tens of thousands of young people in need of jobs and school-ing and lacking familiarity with the region. Even Mex-ico, larger and at least somewhat more prosperous, would have enormous capacity issues were it to re-ceive so many individuals,” they argued.
On more internal issues, they also referred to the impact the absence of DACA would have on readiness for the military. “Hundreds of DACA recipients are currently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces through the Military Accession Vital to National Interest (“MAVNI”) program, which recruits immigrants with special, mission-critical skills such as language profi-ciency and medical expertise that are urgently needed by the military.”
On the other hand, “friends of the court” argued that rescinding DACA would make it difficult for security forces to fight crime on U.S. territory and across region. “Law enforcement and homeland security professionals agree that DACA vastly improved the safety of American cities by de-creasing fear of police officers in immigrant communities and encouraging immigrants to cooperate with law enforcement efforts.”
According to the “Amicus Curiae”, nearly 60% of DACA beneficiaries have declared willingness to report a crime, something they would not have done before having the protection status granted by this program.
Finally, the “friends of the court” talk money. They say that eliminating DACA would divert a significant amount of funds that could be used for “urgent and real” national security needs. The cost of deportation of DACA beneficiaries, they estimate, would be $7.5 billion. ” This money is urgently needed for other priorities: to combat cross-border and international crime, prevent terrorist at-tacks, and address other emergent security threats.”
Furthermore, they argue that DACA recipients contribute some 42 billion dollars to the U.S. economy each year.
Facebook, Apple, Target
18 business associations and 125 companies introduced another brief as “friends of the court”, also on October 4th, in order to advocate for the continuation of DACA precisely with economic arguments. These are companies as powerful as Facebook, Hewlet Packard, IBM, IKEA, Levi Strauss, Netflix, Marriot Hotels, Netgear, Spotify, Target, Tesla or Twitter.
The 143 on the list, as the brief says, “collectively contribute trillions of dollars in annual revenue to the American economy and have millions of employees.”
In their opinion, rescinding DACA would not only hurt their recipients, families and loved ones, ” but also the many U.S. businesses that count on them to help fuel continued innovation and economic growth.”
Because DACA grants work permits to Dreamers, (most of whom have a bachelor’s degree and, in many cases, graduated from college) “over 90 per-cent of Dreamers are employed in virtually every sec-tor of the economy—from construction workers to nurses to cooks to computer scientists.8 Their employ-ment supports the growth of U.S. companies and the economy in a number of ways.”
These companies and business associations argue that Dreamers also help the economy grow because they fill jobs that would otherwise remain vacant, “due to an insufficient supply of workers.”
“If this Court permits the DACA rescission to take effect and thereby end Dreamers’ work authorization, companies will face an estimated $6.3 billion in costs to replace Dreamers—if they can even find new employees to fill the empty positions. Companies will forfeit the funds invested in training Dreamers, and will incur costs recruiting and training new employees, who will be less experienced and therefore less productive.”
For his part, Apple CEO Tim Cook also introduced an Amicus Curiae brief with similar arguments.
“Apple employs 443 Dreamers who come from more than 25 different countries on four continents. We did not hire them out of kindness or charity. We did it because Dreamers embody Apple’s innovation strategy. They come from diverse backgrounds and display a wide range of skills and experiences that equip them to tackle problems from different perspectives. Be-cause they thrived in the face of adversity, they often exhibit extraordinary levels of grit and drive.”