Student Government Leaders Call on Trump to Continue DACA

More than 50 student government presidents have signed a letter to President Trump asking him to continue the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, under which more than 700,000 young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, many of them now college students, have obtained the right to work and temporary protection from deportation. Trump has said he would end the program, created under President Obama's executive authority, although the White House chief of staff told Fox News Sunday this weekend that the president wants to work with legislators “to get a long-term solution on that issue.”

The letter also urges Trump to continue visas for international students as well as H-1B visas, which for some international students provide a route to staying and working in the U.S. after graduation but which Trump has criticized as a "cheap labor program" ripe for abuse. During the campaign Trump at one point proposed banning all Muslims from entering the country and subsequently said he would temporarily suspend visa processing for certain countries "that have a history of exporting terrorism" in order to put in place new screening procedures -- what he called "extreme vetting."

“We urge you to uphold and continue DACA, H-1B visas and visas for international students generally -- including for Muslim students -- and we are prepared to meet with you to make our case,” states the letter signed by the student government presidents, which was authored by Clark University's undergraduate student president, Cory Bisbee. “We urge you not to waste valuable and limited political capital waging what will quickly be branded a war on students and laying waste this country’s world-renowned institutions of higher education.”