Executives from over 100 major U.S. corporations, including Apple, General Motors and Amazon, penned a letter to Congress this month, seeking “permanent bipartisan” legislation that would protect DACA recipients from deportation.

“We have seen time and again that the overwhelming majority of the American public of all political backgrounds agrees that we should protect Dreamers from deportation,” the letter read.

The letter, addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), was signed by 140 prominent executives from companies whose employees have made a combined $98.2 million in political contributions over the 2016 and 2018 election cycles.

The partisan breakdown of these contributions is a near even split, with about 53 percent of money going to Democratic candidates and liberal fundraising entities and 47 percent going to Republican candidates and conservative entities. (“Entities” include party committees, leadership PACs, outside spending groups and 527 committees).

As polarizing of a political issue as immigration is, the letter framed the looming termination of the DACA program as a “crisis” — not just a humanitarian one, but an economic one.

“(F)ailure to act in time will lead to businesses losing valuable talent, cause disruptions in the workforce, and will result in significant costs,” according to the letter, citing economists “across the political spectrum” who estimated that failing to protect DACA recipients could cause the economy to lose $215 billion in GDP.

An estimated 800,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children will be subject to deportation without a permanent resolution to DACA.

The two companies whose employees contributed the most money to political causes — AT&T and Blackstone Group — heavily favored Republican and conservative causes in the 2016 and 2018 cycles.

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AT&T employees, who have made $14.2 million in political contributions since 2015, favored Republican and conservative causes, contributing $4.8 million more than to Democratic and liberal causes. Blackstone Group, an asset management company and the second highest contributor at $10.4 million, donated $5.2 million more to Republican and conservative causes.

Many of the executives who signed the letter have made generous political donations. Signing executives from the top-10 contributing corporations alone have donated $323,100 since 2015.

These executives favored Democratic and liberal causes to Republican and conservative causes — 74 percent to 26 percent, respectively. However, excluding Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who donated $141,000 to Democratic and liberal causes, the breakdown is nearly even at 54 percent to 46 percent.

Executives from the top-10 contributing companies have donated $22,600 to the congressional leaders addressed in the letter during the 2016 and 2018 election cycles, including $10,800 to Schumer; $9,100 to Ryan; and $2,700 to Pelosi.

The letter called on Congress to protect so-called “Dreamers” before Jan.19, but the contentious issue prompted a temporary government shutdown as Republicans and Democrats sparred over the inclusion of a provision protecting DACA recipients in the government funding bill.

When the government reopened Monday after the passage of a three-week funding resolution, McConnell said it would be his intention to take up legislation pertaining to “DACA, border security, and related issues,” should they not be resolved by Feb. 8.

In the meantime, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he will donate $33 million to provide college scholarships for DACA recipients.



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