Facebook and Google against migratory crisis
The business leaders of the United States have joined the fight that continues to criticize President Donald Trump because of his position against migrants but, above all, for his management in the humanitarian crisis that has occurred due to the separation of hundreds of migrants’ families. The rupture of the family units in the Mexican border has touched even the businessmen of several sectors of the American economy, who have donated money for those affected by Trump’s policy. Among the donors there is the Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who will make contributions from his personal fortune to the organizations that help migrant families to obtain legal advice and translation services at the border.
Facebook’s creator has urged other entrepreneurs to do the same. "We need to stop this policy now", Zuckerberg posted a few days ago on his Facebook account.
On the other hand, Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, twitted that the stories and images about migrant families were "heartbreaking", while Apple’s CEO Tim Cook described the policy of the current administration as inhumane and urged the authorities to stop it.
In addition, Airbnb founders said that separating children from their parents was "cruel, immoral and against American identity values".
Several are the humanitarian groups that consier this act of the authorities as unconstitutional. Some Democratic and Republican legislators oppose the measure that despite signing a law to reverse it, the humanitarian situation on the border continues to worsen.
In the list of CEOs and company owners who wish to end the hostile immigration policy of Donald Trump, there are as well the members of The Business Roundtable, to which the owners of Walmart Inc., General Motors Co., Boeing Co and Mastercard Inc. belong to.
According to the media, many of these companies have implemented multiple public relations actions to achieve empathy with their employees and customers, but with unclear political purposes. Numerous are the companies whose labor force comes from Latin American countries immersed in the crisis.
A professor at the Ross Business School at the University of Michigan, Erick Gordon, considered that these CEOs actions will not change the policy of the current administration although Gordon explained that when business leaders sometimes take a firm stand on issues such as trade, taxes or regulations, political positions do change.
However, it is well known that the migratory crisis is a human issue that moves many people, but these big companies do not suffer deep economic affectations due to it. Yet, the Latin American labor force required in various productive areas such as agriculture and manufacturing will be reduced.
Conservative lobbying groups have joined the critics and have highlighted the inability of a large and generous nation like the United States to find an end to the crisis. They have also declared that it is inconceivable that the "land of democracy" separates parents from children.
Meanwhile, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States has also claimed to stop the arrests at the border. Approximately 3 million small and large companies belong to the North American Chamber of Commerce.
Seventeen states have joined and carried out a group action lawsuit to force the government to reunite migrant families that have been separated in the border with Mexico.
New York and California and Washington D.C. filed the lawsuit in a federal court in Seattle. American specialists in jurisprudence and constitution have commented that it is the first litigation of union states against the practice. The other plaintiffs are Massachusetts, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia.
"Apparently the government issues contradictory policies every day based on new justifications, but we cannot forget: the lives of real people hang in the balance" said New Jersey’s Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.
The lawsuit stipulates that the government denied a priori the protocol process, but above all, the rights of these migrants to request political asylum, which constitutes an arbitrary measure.
Everything seems to indicate that the American society and the legislative bodies are beginning to implement measures against the current administration. This, far from magnifying the United States, is plunging it into an autocratic and totalitarian system. And even absurd measures taken in the economic field are weighing on the solvency of the world's leading power.
Figures offered by the authorities themselves reveal that up to now 2 300 children have been separated from their migrant parents in recent weeks plus the nearly 1 500 children who still cannot be located by the services of the Immigration Customs Enforcement after being removed from their families.