Joe Green, the president of Facebook co-founder’s Mark Zuckerberg’s pro-amnesty FWD.us lobbying group who suggested that foreign workers were better than Americans, was reportedly “forced” out for failing to pass amnesty legislation despite the millions of dollars the group has spent on both sides of the aisle.
On Friday, Zuckerberg announced in a “confidential” email Re/Code obtained that Green, who was also his college roommate, had “resigned as President of FWD.us, effective immediately.” Todd Schulte, the former official for the pro-President Barack Obama Priorities USA Super PAC, will become the new president.
“While FWD.us has achieved important milestones in the fight to reform immigration laws, Joe and I agreed a change in leadership was necessary,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Friday email.
High-tech lobbying groups like FWD.us have been pushing for massive increases in guest-worker visas even though nonpartisan studies and scholars in addition to Census data have found that there is actually a surplus of American high-tech workers. The guest-worker visas would, as the Congressional Budget Office determined, contribute to lowering the wages of American workers.
Re/Code said that “it looks like Green was pushed” and it was not “much of a surprise” given “the lack of any significant movement related to immigration reform, which was one of Green’s big focuses.”
“The group had tens of millions of dollars at its disposal to work on this issue that is critical to the tech community and has come up with, well, peanuts,” Re/Code wrote.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg TV, Green did not help matters when he said that foreign high-tech workers were “truly great” while Americans are “just sort of okay.”
And after Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who has been the most relentless lawmaker in standing up for American workers during the amnesty debate, blasted the Masters of the Universe on the Senate floor for pushing their open borders agenda at the expense of American sovereignty and workers, Facebook board member Marc Andreessen said it was “outright slander from an odious hack” and even implied that Sessions was “clinically insane” for supporting American workers.
Sessions last noted that if Zuckerberg wanted to expand his workforce, he should consider looking at hiring some of the 18,000 American high-tech workers Microsoft will lay off.
“Why doesn’t Mr. Zuckerberg call his friend Mr. Gates and say, ‘I have to hire a few hundred people, do you have any resumes you could send over here? Maybe I wouldn’t have to bring in somebody from a foreign country to take a job that an unemployed american might take,'” Sessions said.
Sessions, though, was not deterred on Thursday on the Senate floor when he fell one vote short of forcing the Senate to vote on a bill that would defund Obama’s future executive amnesty.
“So I have a message today to all the special interests, the global elites, the activists, the cynical vote-counting politicians, plotters that are meeting in secret at the White house, and this message is this: You don’t get to sit in a room and rewrite the laws of this United states of America. No, sir. Congress writes the laws,” Sessions said. “You may not be… used to people telling you ‘no,’ but I’m telling you ‘no’ today.”
He also had a message for the American people who “have been right from the beginning” on opposing amnesty and demanding that “our borders be controlled, our laws enforced and that, at long last, immigration policy serves the needs of our own people first.”
“These elite citizens of the world speak often of their concern about people living in poverty overseas and yet they turn a blind eye to the poverty and suffering in their own country. They don’t want you to speak up either,” he said. “They don’t want you to be heard. They don’t want you to feel you have a vote, but you do have a voice, American people. And your message is being heard. And I’m delivering that message to the senate today.”
Zuckerberg, though, said that Schulte, the new president, will work with Republican lobbyist Rob Jesmer, who is the FWD.us campaign manager, to pass comprehensive amnesty legislation.
As the mid-term elections approach, the fight for immigration reform is more important than ever,” Schulte said in a statement on the group’s website in a blog post announcing the leadership change. “FWD.us remains on the right track to continue all the great work that our supporters, employees, partners and volunteers have made possible, and we’re excited about our future.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.