'America has benefitted immensely from talented Indians': Elon Musk on Nikhil Kamath's WTF podcast

World’s richest man Elon Musk, while speaking on Nikhil Kamath’s WTF podcast, said the US has benefitted immensely from talented Indians who moved there and contributed to its growth.

Musk, who runs Tesla, SpaceX, and X, and xAI, praised Indian engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs for their strong role in shaping America’s technology and business sectors, emphasising that the country’s success is deeply linked to skilled immigration.

“I think America has benefited immensely from talented Indians who have come to America. America’s been an immense beneficiary of talent from India,” Musk said.

During the conversation, Nikhil Kamath spoke about how India has historically referred to large-scale migration of skilled workers to the West as a “brain drain.” 

Musk agreed and noted that many Indian-origin CEOs leading global companies highlight the scale of that contribution. However, the discussion soon turned to how the immigration narrative in the US has changed in recent years.

The Zerodha co-founder asked why the sentiment around immigration appears to be shifting and why the US seems more skeptical or restrictive today.

Musk responded by saying that differing political positions in the country have created tension around the issue.

“There are different schools of thought. Under the Biden administration, it was basically a total free-for-all with no border controls… and unless you’ve got border controls, you’re not a country,” Musk said, adding that the surge in illegal immigration created what he called “a negative selection effect” due to financial incentives driving unlawful entry.

He argued that the political left favors open borders regardless of background, while some on the right believe immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans.

Musk said he disagrees with the latter perspective based on his own experience building companies.

“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. More talented people would be good,” he said.

'Misuse of H-1B visa program': Elon Musk

Musk also highlighted concerns about misuse of the H-1B visa program by some outsourcing firms, saying reforms are needed to prevent gaming of the system.

"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," he said.

However, he strongly rejected calls to shut down the program entirely. “I’m certainly not in the school of thought that we should shut down the H-1B program. That would actually be very bad,” he said.

Musk reiterated that his companies hire globally and pay well above average because innovation requires the best talent, regardless of nation or origin.