President Trump used a workforce roundtable, led by his daughter, to warn of an ‘invasion’ at the southern border on Wednesday afternoon.
He segued into the topic after he went around the room and allowed CEOs – including Apple’s Tim Cook – to say a few words about the White House initiative that’s the brainchild of Ivanka Trump.
‘We want to have a very strong border, but we want to have a lot of people coming in,’ the president said toward the end of the event. ‘A lot of people don’t understand that. They think were shutting it down. We’re not shutting it down.’
President Trump used a workforce roundtable, led by his daughter, to warn of an ‘invasion’ at the southern border on Wednesday afternoon
Trump said of his policy, ‘We want people to come in, but they have to come in through a process.’
He warned of human traffickers and drugs and called it ‘somewhat of an invasion’ of illegal immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Cook was seated to Trump’s immediate right during the late afternoon event, where become a friend of mine, he’s a friend because he does a great job.
The Apple CEO has the president’s ear and has been able to shape his policies on trade. He has broken with the billionaire publicly, however, on family separations at the border and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that Trump sought to terminate.
He said his company employs immigrants who are part of the DACA program and workers in the country on H-1Bs visas and has a right, therefore, to speak his mind about the president’s policies on immigration.
That doesn’t mean he’ll stay away from the White House, though, he told the Irish Times in the summer of 2018.
‘I’m personally a big believer in the way to be a good citizen is to participate, is to try to advocate your point of view, not to just sit on the sideline and yell or complain,’ he explained.
Cook has visited the White House on several occasions, attending Trump’s first and only state dinner, in honor of France’s Emmanuel Macron, at the White House in April of 2018.
They also dined in August of 2018 during the president’s extended stay at his Bedminister property in New Jersey.
He came back the following day for a private meeting with Trump, where the two men discussed the president’s trade agenda.
The Apple executive was at the White House on Wednesday for the first meeting of Ivanka’s advisory board comprised of business leaders interested in being a part of a White House initiative to expand the American workforce.
President Trump told the CEOs he is seeking to make changes to the immigration system to make it easier for companies to hire high-skilled workers from other countries.
‘We’re going to let a lot of people come in because we need workers. They have to have workers,’ he said. ‘You need the people, and you need really great people.’
But those aren’t the people who are crossing the border illegally, he said, tying his comments on legal and illegal immigration together.
‘You are having other people come into the country,’ he said.
The former businessman said that he ‘would like to have the companies grow’ and ‘give them the workers’ they need to expand after he was asked to clarify his immigration comments.
At the beginning of the event, Ivanka Trump praised her father for directing resources to the initiative that she co-chairs.
‘I’d like to thank you, Mr. President, for being here and for your steadfast commitment to a pro-growth economic agenda that is creating tremendous opportunity for all Americans,’ she told him.
Taking the floor, Donald Trump commented on the ‘formal’ tone she used to address him.
He grabbed her hand fondly, eliciting a smile, from his daughter, and said, ‘Special person. She’s worked so hard as you all know.’
Cook thanked the Trumps, saying it was ‘an honor to serve on this council’ and be at the White House.
‘For our company, as you know, founded by a college dropout, so we’ve never really thought that a college degree thing you had to have to do well,’ he said. ‘We’ve always tried to expand our horizons.’
He said he is proud of the fact that half of Apple’s workers don’t have college degrees. Cook said it is Apple’s belief that every child should have a coding education before they graduate high school and working with government to bring the need within the workforce for workers who can code into alignment with schools’ curriculum.
The president told him that Apple is expanding in ways that he wanted to see ‘right from the beginning’ and have put a ‘big investment’ into the America’s economy.
‘We appreciate it very much, Tim Apple,’ the president told him.