Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, recently addressed immigration for the first time at a screening of a new movie called “Documented”. Documented, is a movie that tells the story of Jose Antonio Vargas, an immigration activist and an undocumented immigrant, and that of the other DREAMers who were brought up in America without legal status.
Zuckerberg has been working on this issue for several months, and for the first time he spoke out publicly on immigration reform. Zuckerberg stated that he and the other Silicon Valley leaders are looking forward to secure more H-B visas for highly-skilled foreign workers. He stated that he and the others believe that this is more important for the future of America. He told that they are doing what is right, to the attendees which included high-tech executives and political activists.
Fwd.us, a bipartisan advocacy organization, was recently founded by Zuckerberg and Joe Green. They founded this organization to advocate for a path to US citizenship for the country’s undocumented immigrants. Tech leaders such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo and Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, have joined this effort. Zuckerberg’s FWD.us has received a lot of criticism and attention.
Zuckerberg volunteered to teach a class in entrepreneurship at a school and that was when he realized that the undocumented students in his class will not be getting an equal opportunity. He said that granting opportunities to such ambitious DREAMers is critical to America’s future.
Zuckerberg stated that he is now aware of the need to fix the country’s immigration system and the need for immigration reform. He joined with tech leaders, undocumented immigrants and civil rights activists and spoke out in favor of immigration reform. He said that this issue does not only touch the Silicon Valley but America as a whole.
Zuckerberg has now publicly aligned himself with Jose Antonio Vargas, founder of Define American and America’s most famous undocumented immigrant. Vargas founded Define American to fight for US citizenship for the unauthorized residents who were brought to America as children. Zuckerberg said that he does not only care about the technology industries but also about all the immigrants.