Donald Trump decision on 'Dreamers' programme to come on Tuesday

Dreamers are vital to the future of our companies and our economy, says Tim Cook

President Donald Trump plans to announce Tuesday whether he’ll scrap protections for immigrants illegally brought to the US as children as he comes under new pressure from top congressional Republicans and hundreds of business leaders to keep the programme.

“We love dreamers. We love everybody,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Friday when asked whether young immigrants covered by the programme should be worried. He plans an announcement Tuesday on the Obama-era programme, spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Friday.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Utah Senator Orrin Hatch said Friday that Congress, not the president, should address the future of the programme that protects almost 1 million young people from being deported.

“There are people in limbo; these are kids who know no other country,” Ryan told a Wisconsin radio station. “I really believe there should be a legislative solution.”

Hundreds of chief executives and business leaders in the US also signed a letter urging Trump not to scrap the programme. The White House said this week that it was still reviewing the programme adopted when Barack Obama was in office.

‘Vital’ to future

“Dreamers are vital to the future of our companies and our economy,” Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook, Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos and more than 350 other executives said in the letter, which was posted on a website late Thursday. “With them, we grow and create jobs. They are part of why we will continue to have a global competitive advantage.”

The open letter signals that top executives in the US are feeling bolder about confronting the president. Trump last month disbanded two business advisory councils after CEOs from companies including Intel Corp. and Merck & Co. quit in protest of his handling of the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Warren Buffett and General Motors Co.’s Mary Barra were among the executives who signed the letter, with many issuing separate statements on company websites and social media.

Polls show that the vast majority of Americans believe that immigrants protected from deportation by the programme, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, should be allowed to remain in the US Trump faces a deadline to act after 10 states threatened a legal challenge if the programme continues beyond September 5.