The resignation last week of Joe Green as the head of FWD.us, the pro-immigration reform group, did not come as a surprise, and it calls into question the future of the organization started by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
As Recode first reported, Zuckerberg sent a letter to major FWD.us funders, saying that he and Green “agreed a change in leadership was necessary.”
Missing from Zuckerberg’s note was the usual praise for a departing president. Recode said that Green was pushed. In his place for now will be Todd Schulte, the group’s executive director and former chief of staff at super PAC Priorities USA.
But it’s hard to see what FWD.us can do about immigration reform at this point.
Started in 2013 by Zuckerberg, Green and other tech leaders, FWD.us has struggled with gaining momentum over the past year.
After a bumpy start, Green, an entrepreneur who was one of Zuckerberg’s college roommates, rallied the entrepreneurial community to push for reform, connecting their ability to succeed with not only better visa policies but also broader reform.
On that front, he appeared to be doing a lot, with events at Y Combinator, a hackathon at LinkedIn’s headquarters and events at other locales.
But the grassroots support Green and others built fell from its high-water mark last summer after the Senate passed an immigration reform package more than a year ago.
First, the GOP leaders in the House refused to take up the issue even in piecemeal. Then last spring’s unaccompanied minor crisis at the Mexican border took the focus off of the larger package of reforms; it really wasn’t time to talk about a tech startup’s visa struggles.
Most recently, President Barack Obama delayed any executive action related to immigration reform until after the November’s mid-term elections. Republicans have a good shot at taking the Senate in November, as the New York Times reported.
If that happens, comprehensive immigration reform may have to sit on the back burner again. That will raise the issue of whether the tech industry should try to go its own way and seek the reforms it says it needs, something that the GOP might get behind.
FWD.us said in its own blog post that it is “going to stay focused on our mission of mobilizing the tech community in support of policies that keep the American Dream achievable in the 21st century, starting with comprehensive immigration reform.”
Above: Joe Green, co-founder of FWD.us. (D. Ross Cameron/Bay Area News Group)
