Programmers ought to give Facebook a “DISLIKE” button for the social media platform’s 10th birthday. No doubt, a lot of people would like to use such a button to register their disapproval of the company’s lobbying effort for massive high-skilled immigration increases.
Let’s define its advocacy status. Facebook entered a relationship with its lobbying arm FWD.us in 2009. It went from 2 lobbyists in 2009 and ballooned to 38 experienced lobbyists in 2013. Recent hires include Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) former deputy director of communications and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) former chief of staff. These former House aides are out lobbying for more foreign high-skilled workers, but there are actually many high-skilled Americans who are out of work or underemployed. Two-thirds of the more than 9 million people in the U.S. with degrees in science, engineering, or mathematics are working in other fields.
Check in. Well, for Facebook, there were actually lots of checks in. Facebook spent $6.4 million in lobbying last year. That’s nearly twice the amount it dropped the previous year and 4 times as much as two years ago. The increasing amounts of money recently were spent to get the Senate mass amnesty bill passed. Facebook succeeded by getting a carve-out in the Senate mass amnesty bill, S. 744, that would eviscerate the requirement that Facebook make a “good faith” effort to hire Americans before getting foreign labor with H-1B visas. Now FWD.us continues the push to get the House to follow suit, by dropping $750,000 for only 10 days of ads on immigration.
What’s on Facebook’s news feed? Scroll down a bit, and find Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Washington Post op-ed last year. He made the statement that “In a knowledge economy, the most important resources are the talented people we educate and attract to our country.” Note that he said “attract to” not “hire in.” Zuckerberg considers foreign labor most important, not American workers. Between 2009 and 2012 during this knowledge economy that the tech industry is benefiting from, 67% of new jobs went to foreign-born workers.
Who is Facebook friends with? There are some familiar connections here, as founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched the FWD.us lobbying arm by friending some powerful contacts in the technology world. Along with the help from Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, it bankrolled the massive lobbying effort. And what do all these friends join together for? These tech industry leaders want something like the Senate immigration bill, which triples the number of so-called skilled (H-1B visa) guest workers who may enter the U.S. annually and exempts green card holders with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, from the cap on employment-based immigration. Both of these efforts will dramatically increase competition for Americans entering or working in those fields. Apparently, these tech industries are no friend to the American worker.
The increasing involvement of Facebook in the immigration debate, at the expense of American workers, is unfortunately, not something to celebrate.
14 Comments
Mark,
If open-borders is so great, why don’t you insist on them for your beloved Israel?
Well, Bill Gates is no longer heading Microsoft. He has stepped down and appointed India-born Satya Nadella his successor. No big surprise, as it seems like East Indians are taking over everything is this country. You can’t see a news story about state or local government, medical or engineering topics, with out seeing that some Indian-born person is in charge. I just don’t understand why so many people, and especially the young folks in this country, cannot recognize what is happening, that American workers are being displaced. It seems like there is no sense of patriotism or loyalty to country and fellow citizens anymore.
Zucker needs to learn that if you can not support your own country with jobs then he does not belong here. And one of his buildings is near here in Central Oregon. Who is working there? We have many illegal immigrants over there so who knows.
Please sign and share my petiition.
https://www.change.org/petitions/president-of-the-united-states-no-immigration-reform
Here are the titles of some relevant articles documenting how economic elites are permanently displacing Americans from their technology-based careers to enrich the elites. The second article shows the unprecedented economic harms that are occurring to the American middle class. The last one provides documentation about corrupt Microsoft lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his team aided Microsoft in obtaining three “Microsoft-friendly” changes to H-1B Visa legislation between 1995-2000. Microsoft and its proxies expended about $100 million on “lobbying” during that period. The result of Microsoft’s lobbying has boosted the firm’s profitability since 2000 by billions of dollars. Please search by title for the PDF version of each report.
U.S. Colleges Are Both Victimizers and Victims of Mass Immigration – U.S. Colleges Are Both Victimizers and Victims of Mass Immigration
Fall, 2012
How Record Immigration Levels Robbed American High-Tech Workers of $10 Trillion
Spring, 2012
The Greedy Gates Immigration Gambit
Fall 2007 (Published in January 2008)
This article provides important legislative history.
Career Destruction Sites – What American colleges have become
Spring 2005
Living in Caifornia is quite different from the rest of the States. Many do not realize the overwhelming burden we have in this State. I believe it’s now 47% Hispanics (mostly illegals) living in Los Angeles. Ten years ago there were two TV channels in Spanish, now there are six in my area alone. I go to Costco and rarely hear English. My daughter is trying to get into nursing schools, but one of the requirements is that she speak Spanish! I’m sick and tired of the illegals and legals that are becoming more agressive and arrogant. DEMANDING that we take them all in and give them everything they think the deserve. Mark–you are an ***! Get out of your ivory tower and see how the rest of us live.
He wants American teens to give him all their information, their friends, yada yada yada. He just doesn’t want to hire Americans. Well, screw you Zuck.
Zuckerberg just wants more people to sign up for Facebook. He wants those 15 million new subscribers. The only problem is that most of the illegals can’t read and write or speak English!
Not only can the illegals not speak English, neither can the new hires. And Zuckerberg is wondering why American teens and young people are leaving his little privacy-violation monetizing swamp? He doesn’t employ AMericans, so of course his sucky product doesn’t work with Americans.
Sorry ZUCK, we no longer support you or FACEBOOK due to your meddling into our economy, meaning OUR job market!!
What we made, we can take away!!!
What Goes Around, Comes Around
Facebook is taking a well deserved pounding in the stock market.
Notice Bill Gates is helping to finance the massive lobbying effort. Bill Gates is a hypocrite. He portrays himself as the world’s greatest humanitarian, while simultaneously lobbying to screw American workers.
My thoughts exactly. Gates is an American criminal. Enemy of the American people. He purchased a massive part of the US media after the FCC changed the laws that said no person or entity could own more than 5% of a media outlet. Then he spun the truth about American worker skills and the American work ethic to lobby Congress to change the laws in favor of Microsoft.
Bill Gates was born with a Gold Spoon in his mouth. His father got him a job on Capital Hill as a young adult where he learned all about lobbying. His mother arranged for him to purchase the original Operating System for PCs from IBM with her relationship to the CEO of IBM.
He’s not a genius. Microsoft Windows was invented by DARPA and Xerox and others, not Microsoft. None of these people who are lobbying for more foreign workers had to struggle in life.
They are getting greedier and greedier. The lines are drawn and it’s time for the American people to unite and stay united on behalf of the middle and lower wealth classes of Americans. (lower wealth classes , because we have more morals and ethics than do the “upper class”).
We must win this battle in Congress to put the American citizen first. …and stop Gates, Zuckerberg’s drain on the American economy.
Zuck’s turned into one of this nations biggest immigrant parasites, all the while he’s backstabbing American citizens!
Why would any American student put in the time and money to obtain a tech degree, when Zuckerberg and his fellow billionaire cronies will do all they can to bring in cheaper foreign workers? Why put in that time and money when Zuckerberg’s goal is to see you serving coffee at Starbucks while he makes more money from his foreign indentured servants?
Not to mention a lot of the people in San Francisco are saying that all the foreign workers brought in are raising the price of housing, already high, beyond what the typical person can hope to afford.