Some local employers are raising concerns that a pool of increasingly well educated workers could be diminished with the decision Tuesday by President Donald Trump to phase out a program that shields young unauthorized immigrants from deportation.

While it’s difficult to know how much of a presence such immigrants have among individual employers, they are seen by some as a valuable asset at a time when it’s becoming more challenging to fill certain positions in the local economy.

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“This absolutely limits our ability to get the best and most committed people into the teaching professions,” San Diego City Unified School Board President Richard Barrera said of the Trump administration’s move to gradually end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “If you take a large group of people out of the potential pool of applicants you’re limiting the quality of applicants in the pool. That’s true across the economy.”


What’s most concerning to the schools, Barrera said, is the impact he expects the DACA phaseout could have on the district’s efforts to diversify its workforce to better mirror its increasingly diverse student population.

“It makes complete sense that a student who grows up in our district and is undocumented and then qualifies for DACA and has a dream to become a teacher, that student is exactly the kind of student we want in our district,” Barrera added. “If they become a teacher in our classrooms they’ll be able to connect to students in our district in a way that no one else can because they’ve experienced what students are going through as young people.”

The DACA program, originally instituted by former President Barack Obama, has allowed about 800,000 young adults, brought to the United States illegally as children, to work legally in the United States.

It is estimated that there are roughly 40,000 residents in San Diego County eligible for DACA.


While San Diego City Schools has not released an estimate of how many of its employees are participating in the DACA program, the district says there are as many as 6,000 students who requested transcripts over the last four years to pursue a DACA application.

Similarly, the San Diego Community College District did not identify how many employees it has under DACA, but across its four institutions, it has 466 students — less than 1 percent of its student population — who would be affected by the termination of the program.

“In any circumstance, any action that would prevent the district from filling open positions would be unwelcome and contrary to the district’s goals and values,” said district spokesman Jack Beresford.

San Diego entrepreneur Olin Hyde, who runs the locally based startup LeadCrunch, said the president’s decision has his young company reevaluating where to grow the business.


“The challenge of staying in San Diego is that there is a shortage of specialized skills for B2B, software-as-a-service companies going through hyper-growth,” Hyde said. “It takes us several hundred applicants to get one hire.”

LeadCrunch develops lead-generation software, powered by artificial intelligence, that helps clients, including NetSuite and Oracle, predict customers who are most likely to buy from them. Founded in 2013, the upstart currently employs 23 people, including 17 in San Diego. None are presumed to be DACA participants, but Hyde doesn’t know for sure.

By the end of 2018, LeadCrunch hopes to grow its head count to between 80 and 100 people -- albeit somewhere international such as India, Russia or Mexico.

“We’re not going to slow down because of DACA. We’ll just change where we grow,” Hyde said.


The California Chamber of Commerce, in a statement released Tuesday, raised serious concerns about the ability of employers to fill the growing number of positions in the state’s burgeoning technology sector. California far outpaces all other states in the number of residents with approved DACA applications — 222,795.

“As things stand today, California cannot find enough ‘home grown’ engineers and scientists,” the chamber said. “We need to reform our inadequate H-1B visa program. Without reform, our jobs leave for offshore locations which would not be a good outcome for the state.”

UC San Diego researcher Tom Wong, who collaborated with pro-immigrant groups on a survey of DACA recipients across the country, found that 91 percent of respondents are employed, and after qualifying for DACA, 69 percent of respondents reported moving to a job with better pay.

They are increasingly contributing to the overall economy, Wong said the survey showed, and at least 72 percent of the top 25 Fortune 500 companies have employed DACA recipients.


San Diego hotel general manager Joe Eustice said he expects the hospitality industry will feel the effects of a DACA pullback as it looks to fill entry-level jobs from front desk clerks to banquet cooks and servers.

“It is getting harder and harder to find hospitality workers, so that has caused us to have more of a direct relationship with the community colleges, four-year colleges, and technical schools,” said Eustice, general manager of the Wyndham San Diego Bayside. “We would certainly encourage our national legislators to take a close look at how we can continue to educate these kids.”

Perhaps just as significant as a potential shortage of workers, the DACA program’s demise could negatively impact company morale at area businesses where employees’ families or friends are affected.

That’s a top concern at Classy, a San Diego technology company that makes software to help nonprofits with online fundraising efforts. Classy employs 212 workers in San Diego, none of whom are thought to be DACA workers. The firm expects to grow to 250 employees by year’s end.


“We did have morale issues (with the president’s travel ban). Employees who might be married to folks of Middle Eastern descent were worried about their spouses and parents,” said Dina Rulli, the director of people operations at Classy. “The (DACA decision) is a topic of conversation internally. ... Morale, culture and business needs, we are concerned on all those fronts.”


Business

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