The Trump administration said on Tuesday it plans to scrap a program that allows about 800,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children to stay and work in the country, shrugging off criticism from within the president's own party and prominent business figures. From a report:
The Trump administration is essentially leaving Congress a six-month window of time to try to save it. The legal shield is known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and since its enactment in 2012, it has allowed roughly 800,000 undocumented young adults to live in the United States and obtain work authorizations every two years. [...] In practice, implementation is complicated. Those previously approved under DACA, with the permission to work in the United States, can continue to work without interruption until those approvals expire. And those who have already applied for protection or are seeking renewals will still have their applications considered by the U.S. government. For those whose permits are set to expire before March 5, 2018, though, the U.S. government will also allow them to renew their DACA status -- provided their applications are received before Oct. 5, 2017. Currently, there are about 201,000 young adults whose authorizations are set to expire this year, officials at the Department of Homeland Security explained Tuesday.
Tech giants like Apple, Facebook and Google are no doubt going to blast the Trump administration's decision: Last week, those executives joined more than 400 other business leaders in calling on the president to preserve DACA. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who previously (and privately) pressed Trump on the issue, said on Sunday that 250 of his "co-workers" would be affected by the change. Microsoft indicated that about 27 workers spanning fields like finance and sales would be hurt from Trump's move. Zuckerberg said, "This is a sad day for our country. The decision to end DACA is not just wrong. It is particularly cruel to offer young people the American Dream, encourage them to come out of the shadows and trust our government, and then punish them for it."