Zuckerberg Ally On Americans Losing Jobs To Foreign Labor: ‘This is what this whole country is built on’

By Rachel Stoltzfoos

A venture capitalist associated with Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration lobbying group Fwd.us insulted American workers who lost their job to foreigners at a recent immigration event, saying they got what they deserved.

“You know, I’m relatively crude on that,” capitalist Lars Dalgaard said at the National Journal event that was partly sponsored by Fwd.us, which lobbies for more legal immigration and a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. “It’s like, if you want the job, make yourself able to get the job, you know?”

Dalgaard had been asked by the Journal’s Niharika Acharya to respond to concerns about hundreds of American workers who were recently fired by Southern California Edison and more or less forced to train their foreign replacements.

“Like, nobody’s going to hold you up and carry you around the world,” Dalgaard continued. “You’re going to have to, this is what this whole country is built on.” He then explained he fell in love with the country at 16, while building houses in Martha’s Vineyard Island.

“Seeing this construction worker just run his life, because, how you can in America with just having the freedom of doing whatever the hell you want,” he said. “There’s no place in the world that there’s freedom like this.”

“And if you’re not going to work hard enough to be qualified to get the job, like someone who doesn’t even live here yet and doesn’t have the right to work, well then you don’t deserve the job. That’s how I look at the world.”

The SCE workers Acharya referred to were let go after they trained their foreign replacements.

“Well that might be harsh,” Acharya said, turning to the other panelist, Pierre-Jean Cobut, a Belgian entrepreneur with an American company that is working to increase the cap on foreign workers. “Do you agree with that?”

“Actually, I do,” Cobut said to laughs from the crowd. “This is what this country was built on,” he added. “It’s a capitalistic country, you know, it is all about markets and jobs, you know.”

The Department of Labor recently refused a request from a bipartisan group of senators to investigate SCE’s alleged abuse of its American employees.

“Though such reports of H-1B-driven layoffs have been circulating for years, their frequency seems to have increased dramatically in the past year alone,” the senators wrote in the letter, asking the Obama administration to figure out whether SCE broke the law. (RELATED: Senators Ask Feds To Investigate Guest Worker Visa Abuse)

In a stated effort to encourage guest workers to stick around permanently, the Department of Homeland Security recently said it will also grant the spouses of guest workers work permits. A group of SCE employees are suing the government, alleging that DHS doesn’t have that authority and that the rule violates federal labor protection law.

Skip to 26:11 in the video below to watch the exchange.

WATCH:

Follow Rachel on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Leave a Comment