For Mark Zuckerberg, immigration reform is the issue of our time. The 29-year-old billionaire founder and CEO of Facebook gave his most recent pitch for immigration reform during an interview on Sunday with ABC News' This Week.
See also: The High-Tech Immigration Debate: Everything You Need to Know
"The future of our economy is a knowledge economy," Zuckerberg said. "That means getting the most talented people into this country is the most important thing that we can do to make sure the companies of tomorrow are founded here."
To push for reform, Zuckerberg and other tech industry leaders launched FWD.us, a special interest group for immigration issues. Zuckerberg announced the group in a Washington Post op-ed in April.
In addition to traditional lobbying of politicians, FWD.us tries to draw attention to the issue by hosting events. Last week, FWD.us held a 24-hour hackathon centered around immigration reform at LinkedIn's headquarters in California.
"It seems like one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time ," Zuckerberg said in the ABC interview.
ABC's David Wright also asked about other issues that could considered issues of our time. Speaking about government surveillance, Zuckerberg said he believes a balance between security and privacy is necessary.
"I think the government really blew it on this one," he said. "I honestly think that they're continuing to blow it in some ways, and I hope the government becomes more transparent in that part of it."
Facebook has been tied to the issue since former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked a trove of classified documents to a group of journalists. Early reports on the Snowden documents, which began to surface in June, showed that the NSA has access to Facebook's user data as well as that of other popular tech companies.
These companies have since pushed for the ability to be more transparent about government requests for user data. Currently, they are not allowed to release even aggregate statistics on government requests made under national security laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
You can watch the entire Zuckerberg interview, below:
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