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Mark Zuckerberg Throws Pal Joe Green Under the Tech Immigration Bus
theodp (442580) writes "A month after he argued that Executive Action by President Obama on tech immigration was needed lest his billionaire bosses at Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC have to hire 'just sort of OK' U.S. workers, Re/code reports that Joe Green — Zuckerberg's close friend and college roommate — has been pushed out of his role as President of FWD.us for failing to Git-R-Done on an issue critical to the tech community. "Today, we wanted to share an important change with you," begins 'Leadership Change', the announcement from the FWD.us Board that Todd Schulte is the new Green. So what sold FWD.us on Schulte? "His [Schulte's] prior experience as Chief-of-Staff at Priorities USA, the Super PAC supporting President Obama's re-election," assured Zuckerberg in a letter to FWD.us contributors, "will ensure FWD.us continues its momentum for reform." Facebook, reported the Washington Post in 2013, became legally "dependent" on H-1B visas and subject to stricter regulations shortly before Zuckerberg launched FWD.us with Green at the helm."
Well, yes, it is tragic. It's tragic because if the US doesn't hire better workers from abroad, US companies with just-sort-of-OK-US-workers will be competing against the better-than-US-workers that US companies would have wanted to hire.
What's the consequence? Big US companies just hire people overseas instead of moving them to the US. Small US companies compete against small foreign companies staffed by the people the US companies couldn't hire. It's a surefire way of driving more and more companies abroad and destroying the US high tech industry.
Yes, H-1B workers are at the bottom of the pay scale for the simple reason that H-1B visas are for people just starting out. They soon apply for green cards, and when they get citizenship, they generally have higher salaries and perform better than native born Americans of the same age.