Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and other influential tech insiders filed a brief with the Supreme Court supporting President Obama’s executive action on immigration.
The brief, submitted Tuesday, was spearheaded by the lobbying group Fwd.us, which was founded by Zuckerberg and others to fight for immigration reform.
{mosads}The brief makes a business argument for Obama’s 2014 executive actions on immigration, saying they have the potential to increase gross domestic product by hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade if allowed to go forward.
“Instead of inviting the economic contributions of immigrants, our immigration enforcement policies have often inhibited the productivity of U.S. companies and made it harder for them to compete in the global marketplace,” according to the brief.
The Supreme Court in April will hear a challenge to an administration program unveiled in 2014 that would have shielded from deportation up to 5 million individuals who either came to the country illegally or overstayed their visas.
The program would have extended deferred action from deportation to the parents of children in the country legally. But implementation of the program has been blocked as it is challenged in court.
Blocking the executive action, according to Tuesday’s brief, would continue “an untenable status quo on immigration enforcement policy that injures workers and businesses, and that holds back U.S. economic growth.”
Straying from illegal immigration, the brief notes that a quarter of all high-tech companies founded in the past decade were started by immigrants.
Other prominent individuals signed on in addition to Zuckerberg — most of whom are founders or large backers of Fwd.us. Those include the founder of LinkedIn, the cofounders of PayPal and Yelp, a chief engineer of Dropbox, a prominent angel investor and others.