Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during the Time 100 Summit event on April 23, 2019 in New York.
Don Emmert | AFP | Getty Images
Apple CEO Tim Cook asked lawmakers on Thursday to approve immigration reform that would create a path to citizenship for immigrants known as “Dreamers”.
Cook issued the statement on behalf of the Business Roundtable, an influential group of prominent corporate leaders. Cook serves as chairman of the group’s immigration committee.
The statement continues Cook’s defense on behalf of Dreamers and follows comments from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who praised the project on Wednesday.
“Dreamers were at the forefront of the fight against the pandemic as health workers, caring for our communities and working on the disciplines and sectors that will help America emerge stronger on the other side of COVID-19,” wrote Cook.
The Business Roundtable also called for an additional makeover in addition to the Dream and Promise Act to fix the country’s “broken immigration system”.
Dreamers are undocumented immigrants who came to the United States when they were children. The Dream Act would create a path for citizenship for about 2.5 million people, according to its authors. Democrats in the House are expected to move forward with the bill this week.
Cook, in particular, has spoken openly about the Dreamers. On Thursday, he said that Apple employs 450 Dreamers in a tweet. In 2019, Cook co-authored a petition from a court friend submitted to the Supreme Court with detailed narratives by several Dreamer Apple employees. At the time, the court was debating whether the Trump administration’s decision to end the Obama-era program that protects the Dreamers was legal.
“We do this here to emphasize that not only does Apple care as a company, but also as leaders, colleagues and human beings,” Cook wrote at the time. “This is a problem that we deeply feel.”
The complete Business Roundtable statement is reproduced below:
Dreamers – who came to America as children and who know it as their only home – make invaluable contributions to America and certainly to companies like ours. Dreamers were at the forefront of the fight against the pandemic as health workers, caring for our communities and working on the disciplines and sectors that will help America emerge stronger on the other side of COVID-19. As we work to reinvigorate the U.S. economy, we need your continued contributions as equal partners in American history, and we urge members on both sides of the corridor to vote in favor of the American Dream and Promise Act to help make this possible.
The vast majority of Americans believe that defending Dreamers should be a priority. As the American Dream and Promise Act progresses, the Business Roundtable urges policymakers to prioritize bipartisan and practical solutions to fix our broken immigration system, enforce the rule of law and respond to the urgent challenges we face.