Zuckerberg Lobbies For More Liberal Immigration Policies

An anonymous reader writes "Mark Zuckerberg, along with other notables such as Google's Eric Schmidt, Yahoo's Marissa Mayer and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin, has launched a new immigration reform lobbying group called FWD.us. In an editorial in the Washington Post, Zuckerberg claims that immigrants are the key to a future knowledge-based economy in a United States which currently has 'a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants.' As expected, they are calling for more of the controversial H-1B visas which reached their maximum limit in less than a week this year, but those aren't the only things they're looking to change."

Comments

Indigenous vs. Immigrants?

[briancox2]

Perhaps Zuckerberg could explain what the indienous population of the US is not capable of knowing that immigrants know. If this is the "key to a future knowledge-based economy", what is it I cannot know as a US citizen that you need, Mr Zuckerberg?

Re:Indigenous vs. Immigrants?

[JDG1980]

Americans generally do not want to do STEM degrees, which many other cultures value more highly than we do.

But which came first, the chicken or the egg?

It's hardly surprising that most Americans aren't interested in STEM degrees when these jobs are constantly under attack by H-1Bs and offshoring. Whenever businesses bitch about wages going up in STEM, the government steps in to bring in more indentured guest workers. In contrast, medical school graduation has remained constant since the 1980s at about 16,000 a year, and physician wages have consequently remained very high and continued to outpace inflation. Given the choice, why should an intelligent young person in America select STEM over medicine or business? Somehow the central tenets of our capitalist religion – like the notion that you get more of what you incentivize – seem to be forgotten with all this BS about "worker shortages".

education

[schneidafunk]

I guess they've given up on the American education system when making this statement: "Immigrants are the future of a knowledge based society"

Re:FWD.us?

[MickyTheIdiot]

What bullshit. "Protectionist" my ass.

The U.S. is the ONLY economy in the world where government *doesn't* work to make sure that their own citizens are first in line for jobs. Just try to emigrate to the U.K. Try to emigrate to Canada.

Somehow we have a majority of people that are willing to parrot the corporate position on issues. Protecting your citizen's job first is not "protectionism," it's doing what the god damned government is SUPPOSED to do.

Why not move Facebook

[future assassin]

to India/Asia? You get all the workers you want locally.