Should H1B Programme be Shut Down? What Elon Musk Said On Nikhil Kamath Podcast

America has benefitted immensely from talented Indians, multi-billionaire Elon Musk told Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath on his "WTF" podcast today, amid concerns over President Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies in the US. Musk, however, added that some of the anti-immigration policies were triggered by the "misuse" of H-1B visa program and the previous regime's "free-for-all" approach.The new immigration policies has turned sour for thousands of Indians who were looking forward to the American dream of world-class education, lucrative careers, better quality of life and social mobility.Explaining why it was important to have border controls, Musk said: "Under the Biden administration, it was basically a total free-for-all with like

no border controls, which you know, unless you've got border controls, you're not a country. So, you had massive amounts of illegal immigration under Biden. It actually had somewhat of a negative selection effect. So if there's a massive financial incentive to come to the US illegally and get all these government benefits, then you're you're you're going to necessarily create a diffusion gradient for people to come to the US. It's an incentive structure. And that obviously made no sense. Like, you got to have border controls. It's kind of ridiculous not to."Musk also addressed the perception battle about jobs being taken away by people from other countries. "I don't know how real that is. My direct observation is that there's always a scarcity of talented people. So you know, from my standpoint, I'm like we have a lot of difficulty finding enough talented people to get these difficult tasks done and so more talented people would be good."The Tesla and SpaceX CEO added that he focusses on trying "to get the most talented people in the world".Asked if there is "misuse of the H-1B visa", he said he doesn't think the programme should be shut down."I think there's been some misuse of the, you know, H-1B programme. It would be accurate to say that there's, you know, like some of the outsourcing companies have kind of gamed the system on the H-1B front, and we need to stop the gaming of the system. But I'm certainly not in the school of thought that we should shut down the H1B programme."'My Partner Is Half-Indian'During the podcast, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO added that his partner Shivon Zilis is half-Indian. The billionaire also revealed that the middle name of one of his sons with Zilis is Sekhar, named after Indian-American physicist and Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. " I'm not sure if you know this, but my partner Shivon is half Indian," Musk said, adding, "One of my sons with her, his middle name is Sekhar after Chandrasekhar."Musk revealed Zilis grew up in Canada. "She was given up for adoption when she was a baby. I think her father was like an exchange student at the university or something like that," said Musk.