President of Zuckerberg Pro-Amnesty Group Resigns

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.”

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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.”