Should Elon Musk Have Been Prosecuted For Overstaying His Visa - Jamie Raskin Asks
06:07 Share

At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving.

The Coca-Cola Company and its system of independent bottlers is an American story, contributing $59 billion to the American economy by sourcing many of its ingredients and packaging materials right here within the United States. It has also supported 860,000 American jobs and invested $128 million in community empowerment programs across the country. Locally bottled, nationally loved. Learn more at Coke.com slash US Impact.

Rated T for Teen. Each year, thousands of adults lose their shred. It's an epidemic simply known as shred loss. But it doesn't have to be this way. Because rekindling your shred is as easy as playing the new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4. With new parks...

cross-platform multiplayer, and sick new game modes, we can put an end to shred loss everywhere. Hit the new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 and show the world that the shred's not dead. Pre-order Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 and play the Foundry demo.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads that shape SpaceX, Tesla, X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. I'm your host, Will Walden. Will Walden: Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. The distinguished gentleman from Arizona began by talking about visa overstays. And so Mr. Nordstrom wanted to ask you about that.

There's been a lot of discussion recently about a famous case of a visa overstay, that of Elon Musk, who

had a student visa, was granted entry to the country, and then didn't go to school and said he never really wanted to go to school, but stayed and was able to get to work. And I wonder, in your response to the gentleman from Arizona, you said, or someone said that there was something like a half million people in this context. What are we doing about these visa overstays? And going back to your original comment, would we be better off if

People like Elon Musk were kicked out of the country at that point. People who overstay a student visa or a work visa, um,

You know, because my experience from traveling abroad is that oftentimes what we get in America is the most ambitious people, the people want to work the hardest, create the businesses, win, you know, Pulitzer Prizes and Nobel Prizes and so on. And he would seem to fall into that example. I mean, I guess he's in a category of his own, but somebody who was very ambitious and wanted to come here. But would we be better off making sure that everybody was kicked out of the country the day after their visa expired?

We absolutely would not be better off. We'd be substantially worse off if that were the case, especially in that example of Mr. Musk. The reason why he did what he did with the student visas and the tricky H-1B situation, everything was because there was no other way for him to come to this country lawfully.

And it is absurd that in this country, which has been built by immigrants, all of us are descendants of immigrants here in this country today. We have a proud history of being open, that there is no other way for him to come here lawfully, to open businesses, to try his mettle, to create new firms that are

multi-billion dollar, trillion dollars of value that he has created in the world and other people like him. The government should focus on the security threats. They should focus on criminals. They could go after these folks like ICE went after these Iranians in the last couple days, many of whom had criminal convictions. They should not be wasting their time on people with expired fingerprints

fishing licenses who are student visas. Now the government does do a good amount now, especially under this administration of trying to track down some of these overstays. Uh, but it's not a high priority because they need to go after criminals and national security threats and people like that. Every dollar they spend and every minute they waste going after non-criminals and non-seer people who aren't national security threats is a waste. Okay. Um,

I think you're intimating views that are congruent with my own, which are we should make it much, much more difficult for people to get into America illegally and much easier for people to get into the country legally and lawfully. And I think that we have bipartisan convergence around the first issue, that we want to make it difficult to get in the country illegally, but we seem to disagree about the...

importance or the value of allowing people to get into the country lawfully. I think that our temporary chairman here said, and please correct me if I'm wrong, mass migration is the single biggest existential threat to our country today. What do you think about that as, you know,

Setting aside climate change, terrorism, social and racial division, is mass migration the biggest threat to our country? If we had massive lawful migration, would that be a bad thing for America? The overuse of the word existential...

is a prime example of threat inflation, of trying to terrify people for no good reason. The idea that the existence of the United States is threatened by immigration is absurd. It is just the opposite. The future of the United States is guaranteed and enhanced by immigration to this country. It is what will guarantee the growth. If there was no immigration, for instance, starting right now, the population of this country will start to shrink in the mid-2040s.

There will be fewer Americans. There will be a smaller America unless we expand or at least continue the legal immigration that we have now. Okay, so why do you think immigration has become such a vexed political problem? I know historically we've gone through periods of anti-immigration fervor and xenophobia, but...

If we've got the grounds for bipartisan compromises we've seen repeatedly, why do some people keep on wanting to use this as a political club?

So I think it's obviously a vote getter. It obviously infuriates a lot of people. And to be totally fair to these folks who I disagree with, I do think people see chaos and they really don't like it, right? But I think the chaos is caused by our restrictive immigration system overwhelmingly. And if we want to get control in the long term, we need to do what you suggest, which is expand legal immigration opportunities to the United States. Enforcement matters, but legal immigration matters a ton too.

You know that one friend who somehow knows everything about money? Yeah, now imagine they live in your phone. Say hey to Experian, your big financial friend. It's the app that helps you check your FICO score, find ways to save, and basically feel like a financial genius. And guess what? It's totally free. So go on, download the Experian app. Trust me, having a BFF like this is a total game changer.

Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support. If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I'd greatly appreciate it. It helps out the show tremendously, and you'll never miss an episode. And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more, go to patreon.com slash stage zero.

And please take care of yourselves and each other. And I'll see you tomorrow.