With a new political advocacy group that plans to inject millions of dollars into shaping public policy coast to coast, Mark Zuckerberg is taking a significant step onto the political stage, expanding his influence far beyond his home turf in Silicon Valley.

The billionaire founder and chief executive of Facebook made it official Thursday that he plans to take on a far more visible national role in launching Fwd.us, which will lobby for the passage of comprehensive immigration reform, investments in scientific research and higher educational standards. He has the backing of some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent executives, including Google Inc. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Marissa Mayer.

Fwd.us has raised $25 million and hopes to double that amount. It has hired a high-powered team of consultants and lobbyists on both sides of the political aisle to help press the technology industry’s agenda in Washington.

Equally ambitious are Zuckerberg’s plans to rally support for those causes closer to home. Fwd.us, headed by his Harvard roommate and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Joe Green, is bringing on an organizing director and plans to hire community organizers in tech hubs across the country to encourage technology workers to become more engaged in politics and turn out support on social media for industry causes — a tactic that helped defeat Hollywood-sponsored anti-piracy legislation.

Fwd.us is kicking off its efforts with a push for undocumented workers to become U.S. citizens and for an increase in the flow of skilled guest workers into the U.S. The launch of the group comes as a group of senators prepare to deliver a long-awaited immigration bill that would increase the number of visas available for highly skilled workers in science and technology.

“We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants,” Zuckerberg, 28, wrote in an editorial piece for the Washington Post. “And it’s a policy unfit for today’s world.”

We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants. And it’s a policy unfit for today’s world.

The economy of the last century was primarily based on natural resources, industrial machines and manual labor. Many of these resources were zero-sum and controlled by companies. If someone else had an oil field, then you did not. There were only so many oil fields, and only so much wealth could be created from them.

Today’s economy is very different. It is based primarily on knowledge and ideas — resources that are renewable and available to everyone. Unlike oil fields, someone else knowing something doesn’t prevent you from knowing it, too. In fact, the more people who know something, the better educated and trained we all are, the more productive we become, and the better off everyone in our nation can be.

This can change everything. In a knowledge economy, the most important resources are the talented people we educate and attract to our country. A knowledge economy can scale further, create better jobs and provide a higher quality of living for everyone in our nation.

To lead the world in this new economy, we need the most talented and hardest-working people. We need to train and attract the best.