Closing borders is a mistake. The tech elite know this. Musk, who was born in South Africa and now heads an advisory committee for the Trump administration called the Department of Government Efficiency, is one of many tech magnates who rely on the H-1B visa. Musk’s Tesla company received approvals for 742 H-1B petitions for new hires during the 2024 federal fiscal year, more than double the number from a year earlier. Amazon (owned by Jeff Bezos) applied for nearly 3,900 H-1Bs in 2024. Most of the 25 companies that made the most H-1B requests in 2024 are technology firms, including Microsoft, Infosys and Meta, the parent company of Facebook (run by Mark Zuckerberg).
