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Mark Zuckerberg is ‘concerned’ by President Trump’s immigration proposals

Zuck speaks!

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t said much publicly about new U.S. President Donald Trump. He broke that silence Friday in a Facebook post.

Unsurprisingly, Zuckerberg voiced his concerns about Trump’s recent immigration proposals, an issue Zuckerberg has been passionate about for years. (He co-founded the political advocacy group FWD.us, which focuses on immigration issues.)

“Like many of you, I’m concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump,” Zuckerberg wrote Friday. “We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat. Expanding the focus of law enforcement beyond people who are real threats would make all Americans less safe by diverting resources, while millions of undocumented folks who don’t pose a threat will live in fear of deportation.”

Zuckerberg continued: “We should also keep our doors open to refugees and those who need help. That’s who we are. Had we turned away refugees a few decades ago, Priscilla’s family wouldn’t be here today.”

Zuckerberg is most certainly referring to two major efforts Trump has been pushing: Building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and a proposal to reduce the number of immigrants and refugees the United States would accept from countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

Zuckerberg said his grandparents were European immigrants, and his in-laws are refugees from both China and Vietnam.

Facebook has also relied heavily on bringing in engineering talent from overseas, largely done through the special H-1B visa program. Silicon Valley has pushed for the U.S. to issue more visas under that program.

Zuckerberg did say that he’s happy Trump wants to “work something out” in regards to Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Zuckerberg says he plans to work with FWD.us to help protect those immigrants.

Zuckerberg is arguably the most influential exec in all of Silicon Valley, so it was notable that he didn’t mention anything about last weekend’s women’s march and was absent from Trump’s initial tech summit with Silicon Valley leaders back in December. (Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg did attend.)

Some have speculated that Zuckerberg might want to run for president himself someday — his new year’s resolution is to meet more Americans in more states, the kind of thing politicians often do on the campaign trail.

Here’s Zuckerberg’s full post.



Watch: The racist history of US immigration policy

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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