WASHINGTON – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said Sunday that legalizing America’s undocumented residents was “one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time.”
“There are a lot of misconceptions about [illegal aliens] and a lot of them came here just because they want to work,” Zuckerberg, who has bankrolled a massive ad campaign to push immigration reform, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
But Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), an outspoken opponent of the path-to-citizenship plan, called Zuckerberg’s comment “disrespectful to our nations civil rights heroes.”
“To compare legalizing the status of those who criminally entered and reside in our nation to the struggles of those who faced racial or gender inequality is wrong,” fumed Gosar. “There is a legal process to enter our nation and we should not reward those who circumvented it.
“If Mr. Zuckerberg insists on weighing in on immigration I invite him to take off his rose-colored glasses and come tour the Arizona border with me,” he said.
Zuckerberg’s FWD.us campaign is pushing Congress to act on legislation that would grant more visas for high-skilled workers, create a path to citizenship for American’s 11 million illegal aliens and secure US borders.
Despite persistent opposition to reforms, Zuckerberg said that he remains optimistic.
“I’m fundamentally an optimistic person as an entrepreneur. The vast majority of Americans want this to happen. We have to push forward. It needs to happen,” he said.
Zuckerberg also slammed the Obama administration for the massive surveillance of Americans’ phone, email and online activity.
“I think the government really blew it on this one and I honestly think they are continuing to blow it in some ways, and I hope they become more transparent,” he said.
He was more forgiving about the administration’s botched ObamaCare Web site. “Sometimes stuff doesn’t work when you want it to,” he said. “We’ve certainly had plenty of mistakes and things that haven’t worked the way that we want to. The right thing here is to just keep on focusing on building a service that you think is right in the long term.”