Yesterday  in a Washington Post editorial,  Mark Zuckerberg called for swift changes in order to educate undocumented students in the U.S. and retain talent from abroad. In order to remain competitive, he argues that the U.S. needs to focus on the needs of a knowledge economy, which are different from that of an industrial economy.  A knowledge economy is one based on creating, evaluating and trading knowledge for economic benefit.

Zuckerberg writes, “In a knowledge economy, the most important resources are the talented people we educate and attract to our country. A knowledge economy can scale further, create better jobs and provide a higher quality of living for everyone in our nation.”

The Facebook co-founder teaches entrepreneurship to middle schoolers at an afterschool program in his neighborhood in Palo Alto, California.

What he found is that many of these bright and ambitious students fear not being able to attend college due to their legal status. Some came to the US from Mexico as babies and don’t have the proper documentation to apply to college.

In focusing on the nation’s foreign-born youth as well as foreign college students, Zuckerberg knows a thing or two about their potential- he himself began writing software in middle school. Zuckerberg launched Facebook while still in college and was a billionaire by age 23.

Zuckerberg has a powerful ally in his camp- President Obama has repeatedly stated that the U.S. cannot afford to train entrepreneurs then send them back home to compete with American companies.

With the launch of his new website, www.fwd.us, Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley leaders hope to prevent just that. According to  Zuckerberg, whose great grandparents were immigrants, what is needed is, “comprehensive immigration reform that begins with effective border security, allows a path to citizenship and lets us attract the most talented and hardest-working people, no matter where they were born.”

Team Emagister 

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