U.S. business leaders and major donors of the Republican Party are urging Republican members of Congress to work toward granting permanent legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who arrived on U.S. soil as children, known as “Dreamers,” saying it could help alleviate the labor shortages the U.S. is currently facing and reduce inflation.
Fourteen Republican Party donors sent correspondence to Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on June 8, saying an immigration deal granting permanent legal status to immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children “makes economic sense,” reports U.S. news site POLITICO.
“Improving border security and providing a path to citizenship for ”Dreamers” is not only morally right; it is also absolutely critical to addressing labor shortages, reducing food prices, and creating jobs for all American families,” wrote these donors, who call themselves “lifelong Republicans.”
Congress is unable to reach any kind of deal on immigration because it is difficult to garner enough Republican support to pass it in the Senate, POLITICO notes, pointing out that last year Republican members of the Senate rejected multiple attempts by Democrats to include immigration reform in their social spending bill.
The letter from Grand Old Party (GOP) donors came on the 10th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was put in place by the Obama administration in 2012 and has long been stuck in legal limbo. The future of DACA remains uncertain as the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments next month on the legality of the program.
Republican donors have highlighted the economic contributions of Dreamers and argued that ending DACA would cause untold disaster for all the industries that have relied on their work.
“Removing hundreds of thousands of people from the workforce will further fuel inflation, exacerbate supply chain challenges and tip the economy into recession,” they wrote. It would also limit the country’s “global competition to attract and retain talent.”
“Our policies must allow us to compete for the workers we need to fuel our economy and retain the young talent that already exists here but lacks the security of permanent legal status,” the group argued.
Politico recalls that last year a federal judge in Texas blocked the Biden administration from approving new applications for DACA, which since its inception has granted work permits and protection from deportation to more than 800,000 immigrants brought to the United States as children.
The signatories of the letter to the two Republican minority leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives say they recognize that with less than five months to go before the midterm elections, there is no indication that a bipartisan agreement can be reached. And with the possibility of Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives, the policy of granting Dreamers a path to legal status could become more difficult in 2023, POLITICO notes.