Microsoft wants it known that the U.S. should not deport illegal immigrants, for economic reasons.
The company’s president, Brad Smith, tweeted on June 28 that “DREAMers make our country, community, and company stronger.” In his tweet, he said, “Congress needs to act.” This was in response to an announcement from the Supreme Court on the same day, which agreed to hear a case filed by Microsoft and Princeton University that would challenge the Trump administration’s termination of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
According to OpenSecrets.org, Microsoft contributed $2,667,693 to Democratic Congressional candidates in 2018, both for House and Senate seats. Microsoft only donated $548,639 to Republican candidates. The company has also spent more than $9.5 million in lobbying in 2018 alone. Microsoft has plenty of financial clout when it comes to determining what kind of legislation could be introduced in the House or in the Senate.
Smith tweeted that the protection of those included in DACA “is both a humanitarian obligation and an economic imperative.” However, Microsoft has over 5,000 employees in the United States who are immigrants here on H1-B visas. Social justice aside, keeping immigrants in the U.S. is good business for Microsoft.
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A report from Congress found that workers on H1-B visas “received lower wages, less senior job titles, smaller signing bonuses and smaller pay and compensation increases than would be typical for the work they actually did.”
In 2017 and 2018, Microsoft joined the media outcry when President Trump considered ending DACA. DACA itself was an abuse of executive power by President Obama. Smith told NPR in an interview that the government would have to “go through us” in order to deport immigrants who worked for Microsoft. In 2017, Microsoft and Princeton filed a lawsuit “challenging the federal government’s termination of the DACA program.”
In April of 2018, a federal judge agreed that the program should be restored. Smith stated that the “business community has come to appreciate” the country’s DREAMers.
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