Nov 5, 2008 08:20 PM
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Tue Feb 9
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A source within Clarium Capital, Facebook investor Peter Thiel's multibillion-dollar hedge fund, claims that Thiel has just donated $1 million to NumbersUSA, the largest anti-immigration group in the U.S. Another source denies that Thiel made the donation — but Rob Morrow, a principal at Clarium and close Thiel associate, has backed the group with a small donation of $1,000 or less. NumbersUSA likes to position itself as an "immigration reduction" organization; it seeks to roll back legal immigration limits to pre-1965 levels. Morrow's support of the cause is inevitably embarrassing for Thiel.
That's because Thiel, who practically makes a fetish of finding the best talent wherever he can, has benefitted from immigration personally. He was born in Germany, and his tech fortunes are due in large part to the genius of Ukrainian-born programmer Max Levchin, his cofounder at PayPal who is now CEO of Slide.
But Morrow is unlikely to suffer any consequences from his support of the cause. A right-wing intellectual and financial analyst, Morrow, too, has made a lot of money for Thiel. Much of Clarium's breathtaking performance over the years stems from his prescient thinking on the decline of the dollar and the mortgage bubble.
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