Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a $5 million donation that will support college scholarships for Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants. The donation directly supports TheDream.us, which will issue 400 scholarships for undocumented students in the Bay Area, the communities around Facebook headquarters. The contribution continues Zuckerberg’s philanthropic focus on education. Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan recently announced a $120 million donation to Bay Area schools.
“Today Priscilla and I made a $5 million donation to thedream.us, a scholarship fund that helps undocumented young immigrants in the US attend college. Hundreds of thousands of young immigrants are part of our communities and attend school legally in the United States,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.
“Many of them moved to America early in their lives and can’t remember living anywhere else,” he continued. “They want to remain in the country they love and be a part of America’s future. But without documentation, it’s often a struggle to get a college education, and they don’t have access to any kind of federal aid.”
Zuckerberg came out in support of immigration reform as early as 2013, when he started collaborating with Define American, a pro-immigrant group started by undocumented immigrant activist José Vargas and FWD.us, a bipartisan immigration lobbying group started by Zuckerberg's old Harvard roommate. Some critics have attacked FWD.us for their willingness to pass piecemeal immigration for tech workers, possibly throwing less educated immigrants under the bus. TheDream.us “I’m in” campaign, as the scholarship fund is called, has already rased about $35 million, including $15 million from Graham.
Zuckerberg is worth an estimated $36 billion dollars and is the world’s 16th richest person, according to Forbes.
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