While many Americans want to limit immigration, the tech industry—and especially Silicon Valley—often advocates for relaxed regulations in the hopes of snapping up the best and brightest engineers and programmers from all over the world.
So it is that President Donald Trump's executive orders this week that seek to ban immigrants from some countries drew a negative response from one of the Valley's most famous residents: Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook CEO authored a post in which he criticized the president's orders as unnecessarily sapping law enforcement resources.
"Like many of you, I'm concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump," Zuckerberg wrote. "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."
But Zuckerberg also praised Trump's stance on the issue that is perhaps most pressing for Facebook and its competitors: finding talented employees. He wrote that he was "glad the President believes our country should continue to benefit from 'people of great talent coming into the country.'"
A talent deficit has plagued the federal government too, prompting a commiserating visit from former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter to San Francisco last fall. "There just haven't been enough people to go around," Carter said at TechCrunch Disrupt, noting that the NSA and the Department of Defense are also facing a shortage of talented programmers.
Zuckerberg's comments come after revelations that he has a massive personal communications management team, which writes posts and speeches and deletes harassing comments and spam on his Facebook page. Still, despite his image consultants and outspoken political positions, he said he has no plans to run for president.