Here in Northern California, cheers (and a few complaints) were heard after the late May announcement from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that he would donate $120 million to public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area over the next five years. The donation followed a similar infusion to Newark schools of $100 million to promote classroom technology, charter schools, and performance pay for teachers — an effort with mixed results. (On the complainer side: teachers, unions, and other bureaucrats attached to the current system criticized Zuckerberg’s intended reforms as too business-based.)
It is curious that Zuckerberg would promote American education as one of his top philanthropic initiatives when he has promoted the hiring of cheap immigrants for his own business. Perhaps he is following in the footsteps of robber barons like Andrew Carnegie who used a fortune made by underpaying his employees to leave a legacy of elite good works like museums and libraries.
Zuckerberg didn’t just dump a pile of money into anti-sovereignty lobbying efforts; in April 2013 he became the de facto tech leader of amnesty when he founded FWD.us <http://FWD.us> . For the new group, he rounded up like-minded supporters among his billionaire tech pals like Bill Gates (who testified before Congress in 2007 that H-1B visas should be unlimited).
The group swung into action by running television ads to pressure House Republicans to pass amnesty and double legal immigration. One early video spouted the obvious lie: “Reforming our immigration system would dramatically reduce our nation’s debt, grow the economy by 5.4 percent, and take bold steps to secure our borders.” In fact, providing government services for decades to millions of poorly educated third worlders would add trillions of dollars to the cost of legalizing the foreigners, and the CBO reported last year that the Senate bill would reduce average wages in America for 12 years, increase unemployment for 7 years, and reduce per capita GNP growth over 25 years.
You would think that billionaires could mislead more cleverly.
The Facebook wunderkind (now 30) is hardly the first of the uber-rich to spend millions on amnesty, however. Research from the Sunlight Foundation released in 2013 found that $1.5 billion had been spent since 2007 to “reform” America’s immigration laws. Monied elites are more than willing to demographically overwhelm traditional Americans with millions of big-government Marxican immigrants of varying legality.
Last November, Zuckerberg put on a business suit (forsaking his trademark hoodie) and traveled to Washington, to lobby lawmakers personally. In an interview he declared, increasing H-1B visas “isn’t the big point,” even though his group successfully got the Senate to remove the existing requirement of “good faith effort” to hire Americans before going to foreign workers in the S.744 bill. Instead, he said, “Addressing and helping out the 11 million undocumented is actually a much bigger problem.”
There are other indications that Zuckerberg is a true believer in open borders. When he was interviewed on ABC News (Nov 24 2013) about his DREAMer Hackathon he remarked, “When you meet these children who are you know, really talented, and they’ve grown up in America and they really don’t know any other country besides that, but they don’t have the opportunities that we all enjoy, it’s really heartbreaking right? And it seems like it’s one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time.”
The DREAMer Hackathon was a public relations event presented by Zuckerberg, where 20 illegal aliens were given the opportunity to demonstrate their programming chops to show they were capable of stealing American jobs — a major civil rights issue, according to Zuck!
One participant in the event, Carlos Vargas, expressed his goals: “I want to help the immigrant community. I want reform for other immigrants, for fathers that got deported. This hackathon, I hope, will be the break that we need, the break that will bring exposure and awareness about the need for immigration reform.”
It’s funny how Silicon Valley’s systemic rejection of highly qualified older tech workers — where 40 or below is routinely considered “old” — doesn’t strike Zuckerberg as an important civil rights issue as he does with young illegal aliens.
Interestingly, he remarked in 2007, “I want to stress the importance of being young and technical. Young people are just smarter. Why are most chess masters under 30? I don’t know. Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family. Simplicity in life allows you to focus on what’s important.”
Another measure of Zuckerberg’s preference for young foreigners has been his promotion of Jose Antonio Vargas, the illegal alien Filipino who worked unlawfully as a journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere. He arrived in this country at age 12 and has mooched his way through the benefits of America since then.
Vargas outed himself in an article he wrote for the New York Times, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” where one incident stood out as illustrating the deficiency of his moral character:
After a choir rehearsal during my junior year, Jill Denny, the choir director, told me she was considering a Japan trip for our singing group. I told her I couldn’t afford it, but she said we’d figure out a way. I hesitated, and then decided to tell her the truth. “It’s not really the money,” I remember saying. “I don’t have the right passport.” When she assured me we’d get the proper documents, I finally told her. “I can’t get the right passport,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
She understood. So the choir toured Hawaii instead, with me in tow. (Mrs. Denny and I spoke a couple of months ago, and she told me she hadn’t wanted to leave any student behind.)
So Vargas understood his immigration status at the time, but didn’t remove himself so the other kids in the choir could have a once-in-a-lifetime trip.
Vargas’ selfish demands have continued ever since, because he regards his mere presence here as entitling him to the whole enchilada of citizen benefits.
Perhaps because of Vargas’ illegal status, Zuckerberg felt comfortable enough with the scribbler to permit him to write a long profile for the New Yorker, “The Face of Facebook,” a real snoozer. The Atlantic reviewed the piece with an explanatory title: “ New Yorker’s Zuckerberg Profile Is Stupefyingly Boring.” After some consideration, the critic decided the problem was the tiresome subject Zuckerberg rather than a failure of the writer Vargas.
In another show of support for Vargas, Zuckerberg appeared at the San Francisco premiere of the alien’s narcissistic film about himself, “Documented.” Zuckerberg used the event to advocate the political issue of amnesty.
He told a little story of teaching a class on entrepreneurship at a Bay Area high school where half of the class was born outside the United States. “It was impossible to tell the difference between them,” he said, embracing diversity.
Furthermore, the plutocrat (worth $30 billion), who normally wears a hoodie to show solidarity with other young hipsters, went on to express his belief in the whole amnesty package, not just cheap labor for tech billionaires.
“People often talk about two parts of the issue — high skilled H-1B visas that tech companies have and full comprehensive immigration reform — as if they’re two completely separate issues,” he remarked. “But anyone who knows a DREAMer knows that they’re not. The students who, no matter where they were born, coming into this country, are going to be tomorrow’s entrepreneurs and the people creating jobs in this country.”
Of course that argument is laughably untrue, but it sounds uplifting to liberal ears. Most young illegals come from Mexico and points south, who are far more likely to drop out of high school than become tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.
Still, Zuckerberg is an effective mouthpiece for destroying America because as a humanitarian millennial he apparently believes in open borders for all, or he at least lies convincingly on the issue. In addition, he cares nothing about American workers over 40 and has billions of dollars to spend on his hobbies. No wonder the open borders crowd from La Raza to Microsoft think he is a fine leader.