Facebook founder Marc Zuckerberg has officially
launched a new political group aimed at comprehensive reform of the
US immigration and education systems to make the country more
competitive internationally.
Zuckerberg formally launched the group FWD.us with an op-ed
article published in the Washington Post Thursday in which he called
America's current immigration policies "unfit for today's world."
The group is backed by numerous technology executives included
Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Yahoo boss Marissa Mayer and Reid
Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn.
"We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants.
And it's a policy unfit for today's world," Zuckerberg wrote. "To
lead the world in this new economy, we need the most talented and
hardest-working people. We need to train and attract the best. We
need those middle-school students to be tomorrow's leaders," he
wrote.
"Given all this, why do we kick out the more than 40 per cent of
math and science graduate students who are not US citizens after
educating them?"
Zuckerberg said FWD.us would push for comprehensive immigration
reform, higher standards in schools including a greater focus on
science, maths and engineering, and increased investments in
break-through technologies.
