BofA sued by DACA recipient after being denied advisory job

Bloomberg

Brazilian Daniel Marques hoped to parlay his Dreamer work permit into a job with Bank of America Corp. Instead, he’s suing the firm for discrimination.
Marques claims his application to work in the bank’s wealth management department was denied after he told a vice president who interviewed him in 2016 that he’d be required to renew his work authorization under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Bill Halldin, a spokesman for Bank of America, said the company will be reviewing Marques’s claims as the bank “does not have any prohibition on hiring individuals with DACA status.”
The complaint was filed as a class action by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, which said it seeks to represent other immigrants nationwide with renewable work permits rejected for jobs with the second-largest US bank. Marques has a similar complaint against Allied Wealth Partners, which also rejected him while he was hunting for a job in the spring of 2016. MALDEF separately sued Procter & Gamble Co. on behalf of another Dreamer.
A company’s refusal to hire a candidate because their work authorization papers will ultimately expire “may constitute illegal discrimination,” according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The string of lawsuits comes amid a national debate over immigration that has roiled for months — in Congress, the courts and the media — over President Donald Trump’s move to rescind the DACA program, which was started by the Obama administration to protect children of undocumented immigrants from being deported. Companies from a broad range of industries, including technology, finance and retail, have warned Trump that ending the program would have economic and social consequences.