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President Barack Obama, in his goal to finish his last two (2) years with a benchmark as catalyst of change, doubles his efforts in fighting against the world's most serious problem-climate change. Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

With the expected sweep of Republicans in the American Senate polls of Tuesday, the business and industry has turned its gaze on President Obama's much hyped executive action on immigration. The Republicans had been blocking the migration reforms of President Obama by saying that it will only help business billionaires of vested interests and citizens of other countries and deprive the Americans of their jobs and livelihood, reported The Hill.

But the Obama administration is on record that it will not bow to the Republican scuttling of the immigration reform and pursue the route of executive order to offer amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and start the process of regularising them towards citizenship and increase the worker visas. Obama led Democrats argue that immigration reforms are vital in making the economy and U.S. businesses more competitive.

Facebook Lobbying

In that context, the most visible pitching for faster immigration reform through Executive action is coming from FWD.us, which is an initiative founded by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook.

In what can be called a sharp political push to the administration, it organised a hackathon last week at Santa Monica and invited 100 entrepreneurs to pledge support to the president's strategy, reported Breitbart News. FWD.us claims it pursues the mission of "advocating policies that will make the American dream achievable in the 21st century economy". It wants overhaul of the immigration reform for economic growth and "live up to American ideals."

Amnesty As Relief

In recent times, the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been very active in supporting the Deomocrats during the camoaign for Senate polls with Ads that promoted the cause of amnesty to illegal immigrants and greater advocacy for mass immigration, on behalf of his forums like FWD.us and Americans for a Conservative Direction. Zukerberg also ran Ads on national cable television and the estimated cost was around $250,000 by way of the advertisement bill, reported CIS.

At the Santa Monica hackathon, Zuckerbeg initiative decided to extend the outreach to the public and work for encouraging the President to take meaningful executive action, both for undocumented immigrants and talented tech workers in need of visas."

Calling the executive action as "administrative relief," unlike Obama's critics who call it "executive amnesty" FWD.us, explicitly indulged in canvassing for improved immigration laws to obtain visas for highly-skilled workers from the global community. Other tech leaders backing the FWD.us are LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Dropbox founder Drew Houston and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, reports Business Insider.

Story Videos

The FWD.us conclave also planned to bombard the social media with stories and videos of immigrants or illegal aliens talking about their predicaments and hoped, "with stories, we can push the needle of public opinion." While using social media technologies to influence public opinion, the FWD.us will also pursue a parallel strategy to pressurise Democrats in the Congress to take up specific issues with the White House and find solutions, such as easy immigration for tech employees.

Undoubtedly, the FWD. us seems very business-like and has brushed away all thoughts of righteousness in canvassing for the executive action with self interest. The fact is that the President is only an executor of the laws passed by Congress and is not expected to impose his will through executive fiats under pressure or his own.