360 Silicon Valley companies urge Trump to 'immediately' stop separating children from parents
U.S. Customs and Border Protection / McAllen, TX
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Pressure on Wednesday continued to mount against the Trump administration's separation policy of migrant children from their families.
Democratic attorneys general, former first ladies, American Airlines and now, Silicon Valley companies, have all urged President Trump to stop ripping children from their mothers' and fathers' arms as they enter the United States.
In a letter to the president, 360 Silicon Valley companies requested the federal government "immediately end the separation of children from their parents."
Trump also announced on Wednesday he will "sign something" to keep families together but also take action to improve security on the border.
Read the entire letter from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group here:
Dear President Trump:
On behalf of the 360 Member Companies who form the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, we are writing to urge you to immediately end the separation of children from their parents who have come to the southern border of the United States. We do not believe the current treatment of children being separated from their families in any way reflects the values on which our great nation was founded.
By way of background, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group was created 41 years ago by David Packard, Co-founder of Hewlett Packard. Today, the Leadership Group consists of 360 employers - large and small - from throughout our innovation economy. Our country has been built through the brains, and on the backs, of immigrants who have often risked everything to seek a better life in the United States. We celebrate the fact that 53 percent of the engineers that fuel Silicon Valley's innovation economy may not have been blessed to be born here, but were eager to come here and contribute to the innovation that is world-renowned and recognized. We celebrate the fact that more than half of the innovation economy companies formed today have an immigrant CEO or member of the founding team. We celebrate a rich diversity that unifies and strengthens both our economy and our communities.
Mr. President, we urge you to take unilateral action to end this practice of separating children from their families, which you are legally allowed to do.
The Silicon Valley Leadership Group will continue to urge Congress, on a parallel track, to work in a bipartisan fashion for comprehensive immigration reform, which includes the 700,000-plus Dreamers who came to our country as children, at no fault of their own, as well as highly skilled members of our workforce who are vital to our economic success through the H1-B Visa program. Whether high-tech, low-tech or no-tech, we applaud immigrants throughout the history of our nation who have come to America to not only seek a better life for themselves and their families, but - by doing so - have built a better country for all of us.
Sincerely,
Carl Guardino
President & CEO
Silicon Valley Leadership Group
Greg Becker
President & CEO
SVB Financial Group
Joe Burton
President & CEO
Plantronics
Aart de Geus
Chairman & co-CEO
Synopsys
Tom Fallon
CEO & Director
Infinera
Tom Kemp
Co-Founder & CEO
Centrify
James Gutierrez
Founder & CEO
Insikt
Steve Milligan
CEO
Western Digital Corporation