Immigration Reform Update: Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg To Hack for DREAMers
Undocumented immigrants who are a little more than slightly tech-savvy have an unlikely savior in Mark Zuckerberg, who has vowed to "hack" immigration reform with his latest hiring policy.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the billionaire Facebook founder and staunch supporter of immigrant rights has vowed to participate in the "DREAMer Hackathon" along such other tech-notables as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston. This "hackathon" is for 20 young immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. The idea is for these tech-savvy kids to code new software for 24 hours straight, a practice first started by Zuckerberg in his dorm room at Harvard more than a decade ago.
"These students are smart and hardworking, and they should be part of our future," Zuckerberg wrote in an op-ed piece for The Washington Post, speaking about the hackathon.
But according to the Latin Times, Zuckerberg's foundation, FWD.us, has long expressed its distaste for the current state of immigration reform, and this DREAMer Hackathon is its latest blow against the policies. "Americans of diverse backgrounds and beliefs have made it clear that the time is now to fix our broken immigration system and take action on meaningful reforms. Immigration reform will grow our economy, create American jobs, and do right by American families; with this new round of ads, we want to make clear to Washington that delay on critical immigration reforms is unacceptable. We expect every one of our leaders to fulfill the promise they made to pass immigration reform," said FWD.us president Joe Green in a statement.
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