Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us, which was formed to lobby Congress to pass amnesty legislation, sent a letter signed by more than 100 Chicago high-tech executives to the Illinois GOP congressional delegation calling for immigration reform legislation that would result in an increase in the number of high-tech visas.
There is no empirical evidence to support the notion that America has a shortage of high-tech American workers, but that has not stopped the high-tech lobby from insisting on legislation that would double or triple the number of visas and guest-worker permits, which the Congressional Budget Office determined would be a contributing factor to lowering the wages of American workers.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Todd O’Hara, a derivatives trader, sent the letter on behalf of FWD.us and repeated the same talking points that have been disseminated by the high-tech lobby.
“To be very honest, this was not an issue that was on my radar until I got in the tech community,” O’Hara said. “I’m a Caucasian guy from Minnesota. I’m not directly affected by immigration reform. But once I immersed myself in the tech community, it became clear that some of the brightest and best minds in the community were from abroad… And after we educate them, we tell them they can’t stay here.”
A recent study found that the gap between the super 0.1% and the poor has widened considerably; many of those in the 0.1%, like Zuckerberg, are executives in the high-tech industry who are pushing to flood the labor pool with foreign workers to lower wages of American workers.
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