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Elon Musk warns against firms ‘gaming’ H-1B system but opposes visa shutdown

The H-1B visa, of which Indians are the prime beneficiaries, has come under fire from the Donald Trump administration.

3 min readNew DelhiDec 1, 2025 03:46 AM IST

Nikhil Kamath and Elon Musk from WTF podcast. (Screengrab/Youtube/ Nikhil Kamath)

Tesla, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said that the US has benefited immensely from talented Indians that have come to the country, but cautioned that some outsourcing companies were “gaming” the H-1B visa system to hire at lower costs. However, he said that shutting down the H-1B system would “actually be very bad”.

“…some companies out there are making it more of a cost thing, where it’s like if they can employ someone for a fraction of the cost of an American citizen, then I guess these other companies would hire people just to save costs. At my companies, the issue is we are trying to get the most talented people in the world, and we pay way above average. So, that’s not my experience,” Musk said, speaking on Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath’s “WTF is” podcast, released on Sunday.

“I think there has been some misuse of the H-1B programme. It would be accurate to say that 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 H-1B programme, which some on the Right are. They don’t realise that would actually be very bad,” he added.

He, however, said that under the Joe Biden administration, “it was a total free for all with no border controls”. “The Left obviously want to have open borders, no holds barred. It doesn’t matter what their (immigrants’) situation is, they could be a criminal, it doesn’t matter,” he said.

“On the Right, you’ve got at least a perception that somehow their jobs are being taken by talented 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. We have a lot of difficulty finding enough talented people to get difficult tasks done, and so more talented people would be good,” he added.

The H-1B visa, of which Indians are the prime beneficiaries, has come under fire from the Donald Trump administration. Earlier this year, United States Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called the popular H-1B visa programme a “scam that lets foreign workers fill American job opportunities”. The US administration has signalled significant overhaul of the visa program, which involves a lottery-based allocation.