Microsoft takes fight for 'dreamers' to the US Supreme Court
Redmond-based Microsoft is going to the U.S. Supreme Court to defend employees who were brought to the United States undocumented as young children.
The company is among the plaintiffs in cases the Supreme Court is expected to review Tuesday that could determine the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — an Obama-era initiative that grants work permits and shields more than 660,000 qualified young immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally from deportation. More than five dozen of Microsoft’s employees are considered “dreamers” eligible for the program, and the company is challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to end it.
Microsoft President Brad Smith previewed the company’s arguments in a blog post on Friday, arguing that dreamers are an essential source of talent that Microsoft depends on. “It’s essential not just to us, but also to our country’s ability to compete on the world stage,” Smith wrote.
Smith also told stories of individual employees whose futures hangs in the balance of the court’s decision. Smith wrote of a young service and security engineer at the company’s headquarters, who rose to the role after she was brought to U.S. from Mexico at the age of 4. She didn’t learn she was undocumented until she was much older, and her mother told her she would not be able to join a school field trip because she would not be able to reenter the country. Another employee working on Microsoft’s Azure product came to the U.S. with his family at four months old. After growing up close to the poverty line, he excelled at computer science while attending California Polytechnic State University and received job offers from multiple tech companies upon graduation.
Read more: https://www.heraldnet.com/business/microsoft-takes-fight-for-dreamers-to-the-us-supreme-court/
(Everett Herald)
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