WASHINGTON—Still grappling with Donald Trump’s surprise election, the nation’s business community has begun to pressure the president-elect to abandon campaign-trail pledges of mass deportation and other immigration policies that some large employers fear would hurt the economy.
The push, led by an advocacy group backed by New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, is still in its infancy as the business world struggles to understand Trump’s true intentions on an issue that defined his outsider campaign. Some groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are holding off, doubtful that Trump will actually create a deportation force, as he suggested before his election, to expel those estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.
But others are assembling teams of public officials and industry leaders on the ground in key states to encourage Trump to embrace a more forgiving immigration policy—in the name of economic development.
“This election clearly showed that Americans are wildly frustrated with our broken immigration system,” said Jeremy Robbins, executive director of the New American Economy, a group whose board includes Bloomberg, Murdoch and leaders of business giants Marriott, Disney and Boeing. “But it would be a mistake to equate their desire for someone to secure the border with support for mass deportation or other hardline policies that would both devastate the economy and undermine core American values.”
