Zuckerberg urges people to call Congress over DACA

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is asking people to call lawmakers to urge them to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and protect immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.

“This is a basic question of whether our government works,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Wednesday. “Can Congress come together and find a path forward, or will we default to forcing almost one million people out of their jobs and country?”

Zuckerberg wrote that he has been in contact with members of Congress, and that his conversations have left him “optimistic” that DACA will be preserved.

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President Trump announced last year that he would be ending the Obama-era program that grants temporary legal protections to certain workers.

“’Dreamers’ are members of our communities, and there are 800,000 living in fear with no ability to plan for the future,” Zuckerberg wrote, referring to young immigrants benefitting from the DACA program.

“Teachers with DACA don’t know if they’ll be allowed to teach in a few months — but somehow we expect them to take care of our children. First responders with DACA don’t know if they’ll get to stay here — yet they worked around the clock to save lives after the hurricanes in Texas and Florida.”

Democrats and some Republicans are hoping to include a legislative fix to DACA as part of any short-term spending deal to prevent the government from shutting down on Friday night.

DACA is set to expire on March 5, but supporters of the program have been pushing to pass legislative protections well before then to ensure that it’s not disrupted.

“I believe they want to fix this, but we need to keep the pressure on so they know we’ll hold them accountable,” Zuckerberg wrote Wednesday. “I’ve been calling members of Congress and you can help by calling your Congressman or Congresswoman too right now.”