American Express : Applauds DACA Decision

The following memo from Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Stephen J. Squeri was sent to American Express colleagues on June 19, 2020:

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court kept the dreams of more than 640,000 aspiring Americans alive with a ruling that, for now, preserves the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. We applaud this decision.

As a reminder, DACA protects undocumented immigrants who were brought with their families to the U.S. as children. The program affords these young people - appropriately referred to as Dreamers - the opportunity to work and study in the U.S. free from the threat of deportation.

In 2017, the Trump administration challenged the legitimacy of the program and sought to end it. From the outset, American Express has been among the many businesses, organizations and citizens across the country who joined the fight to preserve DACA. As we said at the time, for many Dreamers, the U.S. is the only home they have ever known. They did not make the decision to enter the country - they arrived with their parents, who came here in search of a better life for their families.

More than 97 percent of those protected by DACA are in school or in the workforce, including thousands who are serving on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis. They are law-abiding members of their communities. They are taxpayers. They are hard-working employees of companies small and large - including ours.

American Express and many other companies have rallied to support the Dreamers not only because it is the right thing to do for our businesses and for the economy, but because it's the right thing to do - period.

While this decision is good news, there remains a need for legislation to make these protections permanent. We will continue to support the preservation of current DACA program and urge Congress to enact legislation that provides a permanent path to citizenship for the Dreamers.