August 6, 2013

Zuckerberg's big immigration speech

The Daily Mail reports:
'Immigrants will be the job creators of tomorrow': Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg goes public with backing of immigration reform 
Made his remarks at San Francisco screening of documentary by activist and journalist Jose Antonio Vargas 
Disputed the notion that Silicon Valley leaders are just trying to secure more H1B visas for high-tech workers 
He said U.S. needs to embrace immigrants if it is to get ahead economically 
He has been teaching entrepreneurship classes and is saddened by limited further education opportunities for his students without documentation 
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke out publicly for the first time on Monday in favor of immigration reform, an issue he's been working on behind the scenes for several months. 
The 29-year-old billionaire made his remarks in San Francisco at the debut screening of 'Documented,' an autobiographical documentary by activist and journalist Jose Antonio Vargas.

Jose Antonio Vargas is the first Mexican illegal alien the media has been able to discover in many years of trying with adequate journalistic / self-publicizing talent. Not surprisingly, he's gay. More surprisingly, the Establishment couldn't even find an actual Mexican. Vargas is Filipino.
Wearing his trademark hoodie and sneakers, Zuckerberg disputed the notion that he and other Silicon Valley leaders are just trying to secure more H1B visas for high-tech workers. 
'This is something that we believe is really important for the future of our country - and for us to do what's right,' Zuckerberg told several hundred attendees, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. 
Zuckerberg and his former Harvard University roommate Joe Green recently founded the organization Fwd.us to advocate for a pathway to citizenship for nearly 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

... The Facebook Inc. founder said he first became aware of the need to change the immigration system while volunteering to teach a class on entrepreneurship at a Menlo Park school. Many of the students had been brought into the U.S. illegally.
'No matter where they were born, (these students) are going to be tomorrow's entrepreneurs and people creating jobs in this country,' he told the audience. 

Granted, their legal uncles and great-uncles who have been living in California for generations haven't done much in Silicon Valley, but everything is going to change right now. After all, what do I, Mark Zuckerberg, personally want more than more competition? If only they were legalized, Mexican illegal aliens will kick my ass in the tech marketplace, and what do I like more than losing money?
Of Jewish extraction, Zuckerberg's interest in immigration stems from the fact that his own great-grandparents arrived as immigrants via Ellis Island, to America, coupled with his experience teaching entrepreneurship at an after-school program. ... 
'My great-grandparents came through Ellis Island.  
'My grandfathers were a mailman and a police officer.  
'My parents are doctors. I started a company.  
'None of this could have happened without a welcoming immigration policy, a great education system and the world’s leading scientific community that created the internet.' 

See, I'm not making this up about Ellis Island Schmaltz.
At the top of the Fwd.us website it explains in bite-sized facts just why immigration is important to the future of America and reminds users that: '40 per cent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children'

Fortune 500 firms? Where were they immigrants from? Aberdeen?
and that '57% of engineering grad students are immigrants. Many will have to leave if we don’t pass comprehensive immigration reform.'
Zuckerberg also called for higher standards and accountability in schools and increased focus on learning about science, technology, engineering and maths.
Today's knowledge and ideas-based economy, the 28-year-old Harvard dropout wrote, is very different from the economy of the 20th century that was based on natural resources, industrial machines and labor.

So, let's legalize the illegals so they can start inventing lots of new high tech.

40 comments:

Shouting Thomas said...

If you're going to get perks for being gay, shouldn't you have to prove it?

Seems we should demand a public display of buggery if you want to play the victim.

Why take peoples' word?

People lie when perks are on the line.

Anonymous said...

Why is Zuckerberg 'punishing' Detroit by not calling out to blacks in that city to come to Silicon Valley to start up exciting new ventures? Since blacks are so vibrant with music, they could probably hip-hop and rap their way to coming up with brilliant software codes.

Someone should contact O'Hehir and tell him to write a piece about how all those rich liberal people at Silicon Valley are 'punishing' blacks in Detroit and other cities by ignoring them in favor of non-black immigrants.

It be 'racist'.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for making me depressed by linking to that Fortune 500 list. WalMart? And then Exxon Mobil? Why isn't that two companies? And then Chevron (Texaco)..

Auntie Analogue said...


Because Jose Antonio Vargas is still in the U.S., and because many more illegal alien inveder-colonists known to U.S. authorities are still in the U.S., it is plain to see how - and where - this so-called immigration "reform" and this so-called immigration "debate" is going.

American citizens, while your wages are still high enough, lay in a large stock of lube: you are going to need it.

Anonymous said...

Immigrants will be the job creators of tomorrow

Nope. They will be the job consumers of tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

Zuckerberg also called for higher standards and accountability in schools and increased focus on learning about science, technology, engineering and maths.

By and large you do not need good science and math skills to understand PHP, Ruby, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, etc.

Anonymous said...

Of Jewish extraction, Zuckerberg's interest in immigration stems from the fact that his own great-grandparents arrived as immigrants via Ellis Island, to America, coupled with his experience teaching entrepreneurship at an after-school program. ...
'My great-grandparents came through Ellis Island.
'My grandfathers were a mailman and a police officer.
'My parents are doctors. I started a company.
'None of this could have happened without a welcoming immigration policy, a great education system and the world’s leading scientific community that created the internet.'

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Zuckerberg conveniently fails to mention that many of the entrepreneurial immigrants he lauds who arrived through Ellis Island (like his grandparents) had average group IQs of around 115. These group IQs are some 25-30 points higher than the group IQ of the average Mexican.

Anonymous said...

The average group IQ of Mexicans is 87, just a bit higher than the 85 IQ of black Americans. The United States is essentially importing a second brown underclass, to compound the intractable problems already stemming from an existing black underclass.

anony-mouse said...

Nope.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Aberdonians

Strangely enough though,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Blake_Glover

Anonymous said...

To elaborate on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Blake_Glover

"... founder of Mitsubishi corporation.

...assisted in toppling the Tokugawa Shogunate ... responsible for commissioning one of the first warships in the Imperial Japanese Navy ... built ... in Aberdeen ... began to develop Japan's first coal mine... brought the first dry dock to Japan."


I'm feeling a bit inadequate. An Aberdeen Scotsman in the Meiji's court. You just don't get to do this everyday:

"... Glover was a key figure in the industrialisation of Japan, helping to found the shipbuilding company, which was later to become the Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan. He also helped found the Japan Brewery Company, which later became the major Kirin Brewery Company, Ltd. "

Jeff W. said...

The Aberdonian Thomas Blake Glover may have founded a major corporation (Mitsubishi), but he didn't get to Japan via Ellis Island.

It's all about Ellis Island. All the good people came to America via Ellis Island.

Step 1: Immigrate to America via Ellis Island.

Step 2: Organize major corporations, discover cures for diseases, excel in all the arts and sciences.

Before the Ellis Island people took over, America was an impoverished, backward country run by racists and bigots, a disgusting country in many ways. The Ellis Island people fixed it, though.

Thank you, Ellis Island people.

Anonymous said...

Of Jewish extraction, Zuckerberg's interest in immigration stems from the fact that his own great-grandparents arrived as immigrants via Ellis Island, to America...

Israel first, then. When Jews in Israel are on a sure and certain path to ethnic minority status, and when so many of the crucial government slots are held by a religious minority, I will *consider* accepting an amnesty for illegals.

An immigrant - actually a refugee of sorts - *did* help found Facebook. Then Mark Fuckerberg tried to butt-rape him out of all of his stock. Then the grateful refugee high-tailed it to Singapore to avoid paying taxes on his American-made wealth.

Today's immigrants aren't immigrants, they are colonists and imperialists - here to take what they can get while giving as little as possible back, and to impose their own culture rather than adopting that of the natives. Our ancestors let Mark Fuckerberg's ancestors come through Ellis Island. You think he's grateful for the favor we did him? You're a fool if you think he is, or if you expected him to be.

Anonymous said...

True enough. The problem with high IQ American kids is that they don't want to waste their little grey cells writing endless code for Amazon Instant Video to do things like prevent customers from playing back rented videos on more than one device. They would prefer to discover supersymmetry at the LHC or design quantum computers. Indian and Chinese programmers want to scam their extended families into the US so they are happy to pick their noses and write crappy code for $30 an hour while slurping curry and noodles while waiting for their green card applications to be approved.

eah said...

lay in a large stock of lube

I personally admire Mr Zuckerberg's selfless devotion to the butterment of America.

Anonymous said...

documentary by activist and journalist Jose Antonio Vargas

Who is in the country illegally and who has been documented and admitted to have broken numerous federal and state laws. That he is still in the country show everything one needs to know about current administration's desire to fight illegal immigration.

Anonymous said...

"An immigrant - actually a refugee of sorts - *did* help found Facebook. Then Mark Fuckerberg tried to butt-rape him out of all of his stock"

So much for that Jewish tribal loyalty then. Zuck sided with gentile Sean Parker over his Jewish cofounder.

Matthew said...

Immigrant v. native today is the acceptable bigotry. In the good 'ole days it was "Whites superior/Blacks inferior." Today it's "Immigrants superior/Natives inferior," and everyone tries to find a way to tie themselves to the superior side.

If Zuckerberg has immigrant heritage by virtue of his great-grandparents whom he probably never met then so do I, and my "immigrant" stories mostly all go back to before the Revolution, when they were really settlers, because there was nothing to immigrate to. My ancestors migrated time and again, every few generations, settling and securing new territory for the growing American nation. If turning barren frontierland from New England to the Midwest into bustling communities isn't worthy work, I don't know what is.

The odd thing is that Mark Fuckerberg's immigrant story doesn't support his contention. His family did better and better the further it got away from its immigrant roots: the 2nd generation were bureaucrats, the 3rd generation were doctors, and the 4th generation produced a billionaire.

Anonymous said...

If Zuckerberg has immigrant heritage by virtue of his great-grandparents whom he probably never met then so do I, and my "immigrant" stories mostly all go back to before the Revolution, when they were really settlers, because there was nothing to immigrate to.

What about someone whose ancestors go back to Plymouth rock and who wants immigration? Would his preference trump Zuckerberg's and yours?

Anti-Democracy Activist said...

I've asked this before, and I'll ask it again - at this point, why does the United States bother having immigration laws at all? Hasn't it just devolved into a bad joke at best, and at worst a case of anarcho-tyranny in which millions of foreign-born proletarian workers can simply ignore the law, but a military veteran or corporate middle-manager who wants to bring the Korean or Italian wife he met while overseas into the country can expect a long trip through a hellish, intrusive bureaucracy and tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees to make that happen?

The government is unabashedly creating a situation in this country in which there are those who are above the law (e.g. millionaire banksters) and beneath the law (e.g. illegal immigrant scofflaws), leaving the law as something that only middle-class suckers are expected to obey. That can only go on for just so long before the middle-class suckers catch on to the fact that they're the only people who are still expected to be bound by the law, and decide to stop being suckers. Then you'll have a catastrophic loss of legitimacy for the law and the government that writes it. And... then what? You can't put everybody in jail.

We may soon learn how much we took for granted the fact that the vast majority of people followed the law simply because they felt it was the right thing to do.

Anonymous said...

"Today's knowledge and ideas-based economy, the 28-year-old Harvard dropout wrote, is very different from the economy of the 20th century that was based on natural resources, industrial machines and labor."

If course we don't need natural resources, industrial machines and labor anymore. We can freely substitute Facebook time for labor and end up with a new Chevrolet. A little more Facebook time and I'll have a full tank of gas.

I'm not a 29-year old gizzled veteran of Silicon Valley but I do know if gasoline costs $10 per gallon I don't give a damn about Facebook anymore.

DJF said...

They always leave out the fact that Ellis Island was built to restrict immigration, it weeded out the sick, the stupid, the criminal.

bleach said...

What always surprises me is that these guys call for more immigrants on the one hand and for increased educational investment on the other. If the immigrants are coming here to work, what jobs are we preparing the natives to do after all that schooling?

Peter the Shark said...

"His family did better and better the further it got away from its immigrant roots: the 2nd generation were bureaucrats, the 3rd generation were doctors, and the 4th generation produced a billionaire."

Right, so by his logic, every Mexican immigrating today will produce a billionaire in about 70 years. Also, by his logic, Zuckerberg should never have children of his own, since they won't be immigrants and won't contribute as much as the new Americans. Very selfless of him to hand the country and his own legacy over to other people he has never met.

Media Boy said...

" '57% of engineering grad students are immigrants'"

Yeah, and not a one of them are here illegally. That should be your first clue that you shouldn't look upon the swarming masses of border hoppers from Tijuana for creating the next Facebook App.

But why is that? Why are 57% of engineering grad students immigrants? I think you will find a similar profile across most STEM grads. It couldn't have anything with intentionally driving down the value and salaries that you can get with these degrees by flooding the market with immigrants who are willing to work for peanuts to the point that few Americans consider them more valuable than say, an MBA, or foregoing an advanced degree at all and working the extra years instead of grad school.

Oar Collector said...

"If you're going to get perks for being gay, shouldn't you have to prove it?"

They already achieve sufficiently to the point of not needing AA, so
it doesn't seem there's much in the way of perks for them, other than feeling free "express themselves".

Funny how minorities 'expressing themselves' invariably ends up just being a public show of how screwed up they are in the first place, and underscores the real reasons why they were in the position they were in.

Anyway, no one is making Elizabeth Warren do a Mandan Okipa ceremony to prove her claims.

Paul Mendez said...

So, let's legalize the illegals so they can start inventing lots of new high tech.

The illegals down the street from me invented a universal, keyless latching device with no moving parts to secure the trunk of a 2002 Honda Accord.

Harry Baldwin said...

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Since Zuckerberg isn't stupid, I'll have to go with malicious.

With G.W. Bush and Rubio, stupidity is an adequate explanation.

Sam said...

Immigration has been good to Zuck

He has a pretty Chinese wife of immigrant parents.

Mr. Anon said...

"Media Boy said...

""'57% of engineering grad students are immigrants'""

And a lot of them are neither innovative or clever, or indeed very bright at all. This is one of the reasons why engineering and science are declining in the US.

Anthony said...

By and large you do not need good science and math skills to understand PHP, Ruby, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, etc.

But you do need good science and math skills to do actual engineering. The kind that you learn in American universities after you've gotten a student visa to get here legally.

We don't need "comprehensive immigration reform" to fix the suck that is the H1-B program, or to make it easier for people who actually learned useful skills in the U.S. to get jobs in the U.S. that aren't well-paid peonage.

jody said...

"They always leave out the fact that Ellis Island was built to restrict immigration, it weeded out the sick, the stupid, the criminal."

they leave out everything. back then they inspected you and if you had some disease, boom, rejected. go back to wherever you came from, have a nice day. today, immigrants are reintroducing tuberculosis to the US. today, the US has gone out of it's way to make sure even people with HIV are welcomed. how can a third world high school dropout with HIV possibly make a net economic contribution to the US?

back then, there was no welfare state, and millions of immigrants came to the US, failed, then left and went back to europe. today, as long as you can physically get to the US, you can stay. somebody else will pay for you to live if you don't feel like working or are not capable of working.

that's bad enough but combine this with the recent movement to legalize drugs, and you have a very bad system on the horizon, where thousands of the third worlders coming to the US are paid to sit around and do nothing but take drugs and watch television. or probably worse, their second and third generation slacker descendants, which is what we observe with mexicans.

Gene Berman said...

`In re Mitsubishi:

A Japanese guy started Mitsubishi when Glover would have been just a (young) teenager. Wikipedia gives that date as 1870. But, by 1870, Mitsubishi was already into banking and had at least one branch
in California. The inscription reads "Mitsubishi Bank," complete with the same "3 diamonds" logo, with keystone inscribed "1870."
It's in Gardena, which I think was a heavily Japanese enclave from back in the 19th century.

Anonymous said...

I was listening to an old speech of Karl Hess, the right-left libertarian that once was Barry Goldwater speech writer. He recommend that Charles Koch should have created a libertarian industrial park instead of old the publications. In those days Libertarians were less interested in importing people. Hess had to live off of barter since he didn't pay taxes and LBJ had a 100 percent levy on him. Hess was not so much into cheap labor but what the small business person he was a welder and the local community cold do.

Matthew said...

"57% of engineering grad students are immigrants."

What will that number be after we begin handing out automatic visas to any STEM graduate from a US university? Somewhere north of 90%, probably. At that point you won't be able to do grad work at a US university in STEM unless you speak Mandarin or Urdu.

Matthew said...

"What about someone whose ancestors go back to Plymouth rock and who wants immigration? Would his preference trump Zuckerberg's and yours?"

I'm descended from at least 7 families on the Mayflower and from several more families who helped settle the Massachusetts Bay Colony. You want one of them? You're talking to one.

That doesn't give me any special say over our immigration policies. It's just that none but the most stupid and gullible would buy into the Emma Lazarus nonsense these people are peddling. If Mark "Ellis Island" Fuckerberg did not see open borders as either a) a direct benefit to him or b) a way to undermine and destroy a country he despises, he wouldn't be pushing it, period.

And if we buy his bilge we deserve to be destroyed.

Anonymous said...

"None of this could have happened without a welcoming immigration policy."

Indeed, Zuck. I could say the same for my presence here as well.

So how about we show our gratitude by not attempting to dissolve the people, culture, language, and race that were so welcoming to our forefathers?

Instead, Zuck's attitude is, "Hey, thanks for inviting me to your party. I'm sure it sucked before I got here. I hope you don't mind that I brought twenty friends with me. Oh, and we don't like your music so we're gonna change it, hmm-kay?"

This is not to mention the utter lunacy of supposing that European Jews and Mexican peasants are interchangeable. Or his indifference to the fact that those seats in his entrepreneurship classes could be filled by American kids if they weren't already occupied by foreign lawbreakers.

The tragedy of all this is that I doubt Zuck has examined his core principles on the National Question from the ground up. He's just articulating the knee-jerk attitude that somebody with his background is expected to have.

Constructive criticism is much needed here, but it's rarely welcomed. It will probably have to come from other upscale Jews who are willing to educate their co-ethnics on the responsibilities incumbent upon aristocracy.

Channing said...

" 'My great-grandparents came through Ellis Island.
"'My grandfathers were a mailman and a police officer.

'My parents are doctors. I started a company.'"

Yes, and you are so grateful to this country that took your ancestors in when they had nothing and gave you all an education, a safety net, and these great opportunities, that you think nothing of honoring it by taking a dump all over it to put a few bucks in your already overflowing pockets and rip off the descendants of the stock of Americans who made it all possible for you.

Bravo, F*ck yer berg.

Svigor said...

Of Jewish extraction, Zuckerberg's interest in immigration stems from the fact that his own great-grandparents arrived as immigrants via Ellis Island

Well, I'm of Anglo-Saxon and Briton extraction, and my interest in immigration, multiculturalism, and rot stems from the fact that my own great-grandparents fought the invading Yankee hordes, and were "ANTI-SEMITES!!!" and "RRRACISTS!" to the core.

Seriously though, who-whom city here. Try and imagine the Narrative-Keepers (People of the Book?) just blithely letting rich conservatives justify their conservatism with great-granddaddy's politics.

Matthew said...

Svigor, you're always brilliant!

Matthew said...

"Yes, and you are so grateful to this country that took your ancestors in...that you think nothing of honoring it by taking a dump all over it to put a few bucks in your already overflowing pockets."

It's foolish to think most immigrants or their descendants will be grateful for having been given the right to come here, especially those of a different ethnic/racial bent. Ethnic politics will quickly overwhelm whatever gratitude they feel.

If you support mass immigration, don't do it because you're stupid enough to believe the immigrants will be grateful. Time and again every ethnic and racial immigrant group in every country of the world has quickly demonstrated otherwise.