Google, the would-be immigration policy-maker, should consult Google, the search engine, before it makes policy statements.
The lede in the Law360 article was clear:
The domestic labor crunch will worsen if lawmakers don't find a way for beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to permanently stay and work in the country, a coalition including Apple, Google and Microsoft warned Thursday.
The implication was that Apple, Google, and Microsoft, high-tech outfits, all would suffer if the DACA population (aliens who arrived illegally while below age 16) are excluded from the workforce.
My immediate reaction was: Do DACA recipients in large numbers work for these companies? My questions to myself (one that apparently did not occur to the industry-focused Law360 reporter) was: Doesn’t Google hire mostly college graduates and aren’t they rare among the DACA population?
I then used the Google search system to ask two questions:
- What part of Google’s workforce has a college degree? And
- How many college graduates are there among the DACA recipients?
What Google told me, in seconds, was that “the share of postings at Google that specify a bachelor’s degree or above [was] 77%”; and, separately, only 4 percent of those enrolled in the DACA program have a bachelor’s degree.
In short, unless Google is about to go into the fast food business, its workforce needs and the characteristics of the DACA population have virtually nothing to do with each other.
The second problem with the coalition’s proposal is the assumption that the DACA population would be removed from the nation should it not be granted legal status. Everyone knows that level of interior enforcement has never existed in this country (and especially under this administration) — in short, a straw man argument.
All too often the media simply repeats what is in the press release, without making any effort to look at immigration policy matters more closely.