President Donald Trump's plans to cancel a work permit program for illegal immigrants has drawn the ire of Facebook (FB) - Get Report CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose FWD.us lobby group has led an effort by more than 350 company bosses that urges a rethink to the White House's approach to the so-called Dreamers.

White House officials have said that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama Administration effort to provide rolling work visas for some 800,000 immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children but have stayed on and found jobs as adults, is still under review, but reports of its cancellation -- and the potential deportation of thousands of workers -- has raised significant concern among some of the country's biggest companies, who've said it would cost the U.S. economy nearly half a trillion dollars.

"Dreamers are vital to the future of our companies and our economy. With them, we grow and create jobs. They are part of why we will continue to have a global competitive advantage," said Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) - Get Report Tim Cook, Amazon's (AMZN) - Get Report Jeff Bezos, Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.A) - Get Report Warren Buffett, Zuckerberg and hundreds of other CEOs in an open letter to the President published late Thursday. "We call on President Trump to preserve the DACA program. We call on Congress to pass the bipartisan DREAM Act or legislation that provides these young people raised in our country the permanent solution they deserve."

"Unless we act now to preserve the DACA program, all 780,000 hardworking young people will lose their ability to work legally in this country, and every one of them will be at immediate risk of deportation," the letter said. "Our economy would lose $460.3 billion from the national GDP and $24.6 billion in Social Security and Medicare tax contributions."

Trump had repeatedly promised to scrap the program during his election campaign, but is reported to be reconsidering its future even as several state attorneys general have vowed to challenge the DACA in court if its not cancelled before Sept. 5.

The tech industry has been consistently opposed to Trump's immigration stance, owing to its heavy reliance on foreign-born workers to fill vital engineering and development roles amid a tight U.S. labor market and increased global competition.

Immigrants "understand all the opportunities they have and want nothing more than the chance to serve their country and their community," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. "And Dreamers deserve that chance."

The CEO challenge also comes at a sensitive time for the President, who only last month scrapped two business advisory panels after several high-profile CEOs, including Merck's Kenneth Frazier and Under Armour's Kevin Plank, resigned their places following Trump's response to the violence the followed clashes between white supremacists and counter-protesters at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that resulted in the death of 32-year old Heather Heyer.

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