On Monday, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said so-called Dreamers and immigrants would be the future job creators in America while pushing for “full comprehensive immigration reform” in his first public remarks on the issue.
Speaking at a movie screening of “Documented,” a documentary about illegal immigrants like former Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas that his FWD.us advocacy group co-sponsored, Zuckerberg first told the story of an illegal immigrant high school student he taught for a semester at an East Menlo Park high school. That student, Zuckerberg claimed, was worried he would not be able to attend college because he was “not documented.”
He used the story to tie broader “comprehensive immigration reform” issues to the increase in high-skilled H1-B visas Silicon Valley industries have desperately wanted.
“People often talk about two parts of the issue,” Zuckerberg said at the event. “High skilled H1-B issues that tech companies have and full comprehensive reform as if they are two completely separate issues. But anyone who knows a Dreamer, knows they’re not.”
Zuckerberg then said “no matter where they were born,” these Dreamers and students “are going to be tomorrow’s entrepreneurs and people creating jobs in this country.”
FWD.us, Zuckerberg’s political action committee that was founded to help pass immigration reform, has spent millions promoting a bill that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would take jobs from working class Americans while lowering the wages of working class Americans across all sectors.
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