Taking to X (formerly twitter), Tesla founder Elon Musk wrote, “While it is trivial to enter the United States illegally, it is insanely difficult for legal immigrants to move to the United States..”
He also called the current system as “madness” and said, “We should halt illegal immigration and substantially increase legal immigration.”
Elon Musk made these comments while discussing a immigration chart that showed pending applications from ‘highly skilled individuals’ for visas in the H1-B category.
The H-1B visa category is a temporary, non-immigrant visa that permits US employers to hire foreign workers for special occupations. Indian tech professionals are significant beneficiaries of this visa category.
Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, posted a chart illustrating potential applications under the H1B category. “This chart should make you go insane. This is the number of high skilled workers that want to work here. There is a cap at 85,000 slots that will be filled. We are actively shooting our future selves in the foot,” he wrote.
Amjad Masad, CEO Replit replied, “To put it in prospective: 85k is like a week or two worth of illegal crossing on the south border.” Another user Tyler Hogge added, “Lowest hanging fruit in the country for the president to fix. free points.”
A different chart that circulated on social media drew a comparison of illegal immigrations during the tenures of former Presidents Trump and Barack Obama, and the current US President Joe Biden.
“By all available metrics, this administration’s border policy is a disaster,” the chart read.
Responding to that Musk wrote” at this point, there was no question that “this administration is actively facilitating illegal immigration” and “the numbers speak for themselves.”
