Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Zuckerberg Lobbies For More Liberal Immigration Policies

Posted by timothy on from the old-immigrants-vs.-new-immigrants dept.

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."

18 of 484 comments (clear)

  1. FWD.us? by QRDeNameland · · Score: 5, Funny

    Facebook's Wealth Demands unlimited slaves?

    --
    Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
    1. Re:FWD.us? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pretty much. This H1-B VISA push is called "in-sourcing" by the trade; you bring a bunch of folks from overseas and then you pay them less than what the local talent would want and you push the market down. Then you can hire local talent as well at a discount. If a large number of major corporations want something you'd be right to be suspicious.

    2. Re:FWD.us? by TWiTfan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The great thing about it is that once you artificially drive down wages with H1B's, then you get to advertise more fake jobs for those low wages. And when you don't get enough applicants, you complain that you need even *MORE* H1B visas, driving down wages even more. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.

      --
      The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
    3. Re:FWD.us? by briancox2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The sworn purpose of the United States government is to act in the best interest of its citizens and their protection. Letting a company the size of Facebook effectively design immigration policy to the disadvantage of US citizens is actively working against that purpose. That's fraud.

      --
      We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
    4. Re:FWD.us? by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:FWD.us? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The sworn purpose of the United States government is to act in the best interest of its citizens and their protection.

      They are acting in the best interest of the citizens. They just aren't acting in your best interest. Letting in more techies is good for America. There are still some losers, such as techie citizens that have to compete, but it is still a win for the overall economy. Face it: you belong to a special interest group that is trying to get the government to act on your behalf by reducing competition, at the expense of the country as a whole.

    6. Re:FWD.us? by femtobyte · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem is that this pattern isn't limited to one sector of the economy; it's everywhere.

      Perhaps in isolation you could say "favor capital over labor in the hi-tech sector to drive down wages to make it cheaper for everyone else --- it's worth paying management $1M more, if they can cut wages by $2M." The problem is, at the same time, it's "favor capital over labor to drive down wages in manufacturing"; "favor capital over labor to drive down wages in retail"; "favor capital over labor to drive down wages in service industries"; etc. --- at the end of the day, the "everyone else" you're trying to "help" can't afford even the cheaper services, because they've lost their own wages and/or jobs. The only people who benefit are the tiny capital/management class, who "earn" their wages for taking money away from everyone else. Unless you look at the system as a whole --- where it's obvious that slashing wages for the majority of people doesn't help the majority of people --- you'll be fooled into your addled style of thinking.

    7. Re:FWD.us? by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      you're goddamn fucking right!

      if we don't protect ourselves, we won't HAVE a middle class.

      you corp bootlickers really want that? think it thru, please. erosion of our middle class hurts everyone in the long-run.

      I do think the country owes me (as someone who was born here and spent nearly 50 years paying taxes, working, investing in my own country and infrastructure) more than they owe some disconnected foreigner who comes here for short-term gains and then goes back home again.

      the 'free market' has not shown itself to be self policing so the gov HAS to step in and ensure fairness to the people who LIVE here.

      yes, it owes us that. we paid into the system in many ways and its only right we get first dibs on the pay-outs. that includes having a decent job that can pay the bills and keep us in the standard of living that we have EARNED. yes, earned. this is not asking for any handouts!

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  2. Indigenous vs. Immigrants? by briancox2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    --
    We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
    1. Re:Indigenous vs. Immigrants? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      I'm an American grad student in a STEM Ph.D. program right now. It's not hard to see why Americans don't want to do STEM degrees. There's little to no employment opportunities, and what little jobs there are don't pay significantly more than what you could get with a non-STEM bachelor's degree. I've lost count of how many friends I've seen get their STEM Ph.D. and then go into jobs like bartending, retail, fast food, etc. or, at best, community college teaching because there were almost no post-docs or research positions available and their Ph.D. made them "overqualified" for jobs that would have been more of a lateral move. In fact, they only got the jobs they did by omitting the Ph.D. from their resume.

      I'm strongly considering just dropping out with a Masters' degree, because several students who did that (because they failed a qualifying exam) left and had no trouble finding jobs that paid well--though even some of them had to omit the Masters from their resume.

  3. education by schneidafunk · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    --
    Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
  4. Sometimes I wonder.. by Xenkar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wouldn't it make more sense for Zuckerberg to lobby the US government to restrict the amount of H1B visas going to overseas outsourcing firms? Because if they just raise the limit these overseas outsourcing firms will just gobble up more H1B visas and Zuck and company won't be better off for it.

    1. Re:Sometimes I wonder.. by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes. Quite. Blacklisting 4 Indian companies would leave plenty for everyone else.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  5. Headline correction needed by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Mark Zuckerberg Lobbies for Cheaper Programmers Who Can't Quit"

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  6. S.T.E.M. Education by MatthewNewberg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It would be nice if these companies would be putting this time and effort into pushing for / funding more S.T.E.M. education in the US.

    --
    mnewberg.com
    1. Re:S.T.E.M. Education by TopSpin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People like Zuckerburg use to found colleges and universities in the US. Now they squabble with Congress for cheap imports.

      --
      Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
  7. How about taxing them too? by retech · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No doubt Zuckerberg wants more slave labor to pay the tax base that he and his corp. are evading. I have a better idea Mark, move your ass and everyone else to an impoverished nation. No doubt you'll enjoy the infrastructure, benefits, gov't, and protection that all affords you.

  8. Re:Ban H1B; Greencards instead by rgbscan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Choice quotes from a recent article on H1B visas I read over at Cringley...

    "There is a misconception about the H-1B program that it was designed to allow companies to import workers with unique talents. There has long been a visa program for exactly that purpose. The O (for outstanding) visa program is for importing geniuses and nothing else. Interestingly enough, the O visa program has no quotas. So when Bill Gates complained about not being able to import enough top technical people for Microsoft, he wasn’t talking about geniuses, just normal coders."

    and on later......

    "Last year, nearly half of the H-1B visas went to companies like Infosys and Wipro, not marquee companies like Google and Microsoft. Companies such as Infosys are the workhorses of Silicon Valley, large IT firms that churn out the industry’s unglamorous connective tissue: things like boilerplate coding, user support, and network maintenance.

    So, why does the US need to import labor for this lower-skilled work? Matloff says it has to do with wages and immobility. He argues that since employers sponsor H-1Bs visas, foreigners have a limited ability to negotiate higher salaries or switch jobs. If they do manage to change employers, it means they must restart any green card applications. Matloff says these realities “handcuff” H-1B visa holders to their employers. "

    and further on...

    "There are a number of common misunderstandings about the H-1B program, the first of which is its size. H-1B quotas are set by Congress and vary from 65,000 to 190,000 per year. While that would seem to limit the impact of the program on a nation of 300+ million, H-1B is way bigger than you think because each visa lasts for three years and can be extended for another three years after that.

    At any moment, then, there are about 700,000 H-1B visa holders working in the USA.

    Most of these H-1B visa holders work in Information Technology (IT) and most of those come from India. There are about 500,000 IT workers in the USA holding H-1B visas. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 2.5 million IT workers in America. So approximately 20 percent of the domestic IT workforce isn’t domestic at all, but imported on H-1B visas."