Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for the first time Monday spoke publicly about immigration reform, an issue he has been focused on privately for months.
The 29-year-old Facebook founder introduced a film called "Documented," an autobiographical documentary by activist and journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Zuckerberg stressed that reform is needed for both high-skilled and low-skilled workers and that these are not two separate immigration issues.
"Someone did a study recently that showed half of the top tech companies are founded by immigrants directly. These are issues that don’t just touch our part of the industry, but really touch the whole country,” Zuckerberg said before an audience including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.
The CEO said that he first became aware of the need to change the immigration system after volunteering to teach a class on entrepreneurship at a Menlo Park school, which prompted him to found Fwd.us—a pro-immigration reform group—along with other tech community leaders.