The Facebook CEO will speak publicly for the first time about comprehensive immigration reform at a screening of Documented . “Zuckerberg cares about what’s good for his industry but he’s not limiting it to that,” America’s Voice founder Frank Sharry says.
Via: John Gara/Buzzfeed
Mark Zuckerberg launched a social network that connects 1.15 billion people, but this may be the first time he sits down with a day laborer. Or with a Dreamer. Or with the mother of a Dreamer.
On Monday, Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook — which only really has a vested interest in attaining visas "highly skilled" immigrant employees — will for the first time speak to the broader coalition eager for comprehensive immigration reform during a screening of the movie "Documented."
The film is by Jose Antonio Vargas, a high-profile immigration activist who "came out" as undocumented in a 2011 New York Times Magazine piece in 2011. The screening is being co-sponsored by Zuckerberg's FWD.us immigration and education advocacy organization and Define American, which Vargas founded to bring new voices into the immigration conversation.
The green card that Vargas' grandfather bought for him when he came to the U.S. at the age of 12. He didn't know it was fake until he applied for a driver's license four years later.
FWD.us has struggled at times to get traction in its effort to build a bipartisan coalition on the entire range of immigration issues, but Zuckerberg's personal engagement indicates that he's still fully invested in the issue.
Vargas said the Facebook connection was made soon after he announced he was undocumented.
"You get to know who your friends are -- the people who run towards you, not the ones who run away from you," Vargas told BuzzFeed.
One of the first handful of people to reach out to him was Joe Green, a Harvard roommate of Zuckerberg's, who is now president and co-founder of FWD.us.
The two had met three summers ago when Vargas was profiling Zuckerberg for a piece in the New Yorker.
Green messaged him and said it took guts to announce he was undocumented. "Let me know if maybe you would want to start a cause around the issue," he said — a reference to a platform Green founded, Causes, which aims to encourage philanthropy and social giving.
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