Mark Zuckerberg’s Lobby: Give Green Cards to All Foreign Graduates of U.S. Universities

U.S. tech companies want to hire more skilled professionals, so the government should give green cards to foreigners who graduate from U.S. universities, says a report released Tuesday by FWD.us, an advocacy group for Mark Zuckerberg and other wealthy West Coast investors.

The report claims:

the tighter labor market means U.S. employers are struggling to fill critical jobs, limiting productivity and putting global leadership at risk. These labor shortages are especially pronounced in emerging industries like artificial intelligence (AI) that rely on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills.

“The most straightforward solution is to allow graduates with a U.S. degree and a job offer to start working and begin the green card process immediately,” says the report, adding  “This would relieve pressure on the H-1B program and keep it more focused on truly temporary workers, while facilitating permanent residency for well-educated and highly-skilled individuals who have already lived in the U.S. for some time and can fill permanent roles.”

The FWD.us report is just one part of a broader campaign by companies and investors to convince legislators that they must quickly pass a labor-supply bill in 2021. That short timeline would minimize legislators’ opportunity to debate the value of flooding the labor market for college graduates. It would also minimize Americans’ ability to organize opposition to the FWD.us plan, which would likely cut middle-class wages and spike housing costs.

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“American graduates have to organize now to push back anticipated demands for more work visas by Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce types,” said Marie Larson, a technology graduate and a founder of the American Workers Coalition. “American graduates need a seat at the bargaining table because there is no greater stakeholder than American graduates — they are the ones whose livelihood is at stake.”

FWD.us was founded by wealthy investors, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who also helped to expand the H-1B visa program.

The H-1B program lowers American wages by keeping roughly 700,000 Indian and Chinese graduate visa-workers in a wide variety of U.S.  jobs.

Overall, roughly one million Indian graduates hold American jobs because they are enrolled in the H-1B, OPT, J-1, L-1, H4EAD, and post-doc programs.

These one million-plus outsourcing workers have been used by CEOs, university managers, and investors to stabilize their U.S. workforces and raise their stock-values — but at the cost of reducing many Americans’ opportunity to innovate and experiment.

This huge workforce also helps flatline salaries for American graduates. In 2019, for example, lower-skilled Americans gained high wage increases amid reduced migration, but high-skilled Americans got low salary increases amid the import Indian workforce.

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Another founding member of the FWD.us group is former Google chief Eric Schmidt.

The FWD.us report cites his February 27 op-ed in the New York Times, which said the U.S. should counter competition from China by importing foreign scientists — such as Chinese scientists.

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Schmidt argues that America’s technological advantages can be preserved by continued reliance on these foreign experts:

They are a source of national strength. A vast majority want to stay and contribute to American innovation. We must make it easier for them to do so. There is no need to wait for comprehensive immigration reform: We can change the immigration process for highly skilled people now to reduce the red tape, backlogs and uncertainty that threaten to drive tech talent to other countries — including to our strategic competitors.

Schmidt’s reference to “red tape, backlogs, and uncertainty” is likely a reference to the S.386 bill being pushed Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee.

Lee’s bill would fast-track roughly 300,000 Indian visa-workers into green cards and then citizenship, regardless of the impact on American graduates.

Lee’s bill would fast-track roughly 300,000 Indian visa-workers into green cards and then citizenship, regardless of the impact on American graduates.

The 300,000 Indians are part of the much larger workforce of roughly 1 million Indian visa-workers. The Indians have been imported to replace many of the boisterous American professionals who provided the skills and innovation which powered Silicon Valley in the 1980s and 1990s.