🧵Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath dropped a 3-hour conversation with Elon Musk and the part everyone is talking about is H-1B visas@elonmusk's exact words:
— InfactoWeaver (@InfactoWeaver) December 1, 2025
“America has a severe shortage of top 0.1% engineering talent. The reason Google, Microsoft, Adobe and half of Silicon… pic.twitter.com/Jp8zNwye7n
The Cost of Entry
The leaves are brown and dead on the ground here in Canada, and down south in Austin, the mood is just as dry.
I have seen boom times and I have seen busts. I have seen the internet turn from a library into a shopping mall. But what is happening right now with the U.S. borders and Silicon Valley is something different. It is a collision. A crash.
On one side, you have the new rules from the Trump administration. As of September 21, 2025, if a company wants to bring in a skilled worker on an H-1B visa, they have to pay a fee. Not a small fee. It is $100,000. That is the price of a luxury car or a down payment on a house, just to file the paper.
On the other side, you have Elon Musk.
Last week, Musk sat down with Nikhil Kamath. Kamath runs Zerodha, a big money firm in India. They talked for three hours. It was the usual Musk show - big ideas, lots of confidence. But the timing was the real story. Musk, the man who stood next to Trump during the election, is now pushing back on one of the President's biggest moves.
He told Kamath that the H-1B visa is "vital." He said America needs the top 0.1% of talent. He pointed at the CEOs of Google and Microsoft and said, look, they are from India because you sent your best people here.
But here is the catch. Musk is shouting into a wind he helped create.
The View from the Top
I listened to the whole podcast. It was long. I drank three cups of coffee. Here is what you need to know without the fluff.
Musk is a naturalized citizen. He came to the U.S. via Canada. He used the visa system himself back in the 90s. He knows how it works. He told Kamath that shutting down these visas is "like shooting yourself in the foot."
He is right about one thing. Brains are a resource. Just like oil or gold. If you shut the door on the smartest engineers in the world, they do not just stop working. They go somewhere else. They stay in India. They go to Canada. They go to Europe. And then those countries build the next big thing instead of America.
Musk said: "The reason there are more Indian CEOs running companies in America than your own countrymen is simply because you have brought the top 0.1% talent here."
He is not trying to be nice. He is a capitalist. He wants the best workers to build his rockets and his AI robots. He does not care where they were born. He cares if they can code.
For a snapshot of the raw sentiment, you can see one of the many viral posts here:
🧵Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath dropped a 3-hour conversation with Elon Musk and the part everyone is talking about is H-1B visas@elonmusk's exact words:
— InfactoWeaver (@InfactoWeaver) December 1, 2025
“America has a severe shortage of top 0.1% engineering talent. The reason Google, Microsoft, Adobe and half of Silicon… pic.twitter.com/Jp8zNwye7n
The "Gaming" of the System
But Musk is not blind. He knows the system is broken.
For years, big outsourcing companies - mostly from India - have played a game with the lottery. The H-1B is supposed to be a lottery. It is random. So these companies would flood the system with thousands of tickets for the same workers, just to increase thier odds of winning.
It choked the system. It made it hard for a small startup in Ohio or a mid-sized firm in Austin to get one guy.
Musk called this out. He said we need to stop the "outsourcing companies" from gaming it. And ironically, the Trump administration agrees.
The new rules that came out in September are trying to kill this gaming. But they are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
The $100,000 fee is the sledgehammer.
The $100,000 Question
Let's look at this number. $100,000.
If you are Google or Meta (Facebook), this is pocket change. They make that much money in a second. They are still "snapping up foreign-born talent" for their AI projects. They pay the fee, they get the guy, they move on.
But what about the little guys?
Imagine you are a startup founder. You have $2 million in the bank. You find a genius engineer in Bangalore who knows how to fix your specific problem. Can you afford to drop $100,000 just for the chance to hire her? No. You cannot.
So this fee does not stop immigration. It just makes it a luxury product. It means only the richest companies get to hire the best foreign talent. It consolidates power.
The outsourcing firms are hurting, yes. The data shows their approval rates are crashing. Some are seeing denial rates way above normal. So in a way, the "gaming" is stopping. But the cost is that innovation becomes a game for the rich.
The Death of DOGE
There is another piece to this puzzle.
Remember DOGE? The Department of Government Efficiency? Musk was supposed to run it. He was supposed to slash the budget and fire bureaucrats. It was a big talking point in 2024.
Well, it is gone.
Reuters reported last week that the Office of Personnel Management confirmed DOGE "doesn't exist" anymore. It was quietly disbanded in late November. The targets were not met. The cost-cutting did not really happen. The functions got absorbed into the boring, normal government machine.
Why does this matter?
It means Musk lost his badge. He is no longer the "Senior Advisor" with a desk at the White House. He is back to being just a very rich man with a very loud megaphone (X).
His leverage is gone. When he talks to Kamath about immigration policy, he is not speaking as a government official. He is speaking as an outsider again. He can complain about the $100,000 fee, but he could not stop it.
The Fight on the Street
I spent some time looking at the reaction online. I try to avoid X (Twitter) when I can, but for this job, I have to look.
It is ugly.
People are angry. And they are angry for different reasons.
You have the tech workers. A user named @peplius said we should increase green cards by 50 times because "Indian Americans love the US." These people see talent as the fuel for the economy. They agree with Musk.
Then you have the people who are scared. A user named @9mmsmg wrote, "The only people who want this are tech companies... We need to work on expanding our domestic STEM programs."
This is a fair point. Why doesn't America have enough engineers? Why do we have to import them? The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the U.S. needs one million more STEM workers by 2033. One million. Our schools are not pumping them out fast enough.
But then you have the darker side. The xenophobia. People like @MrsDoubtFireSF talking about a "foreign state takeover." This is the fear that drives the $100,000 fee. It is the fear that foreigners are taking something away, rather than adding to the pot.
The Green Card Trap
Here is the thing nobody talks about enough. The visa is just the front door. The living room is the Green Card. And for Indians, the living room is locked.
If you come to the U.S. on an H-1B today from India, you might wait 50 years for a green card. I am not joking. The backlog is that long. You could work your whole life, pay taxes, raise kids, and still be temporary.
Musk talked about this too. He said we need to "expedite green cards" to stop the brain drain.
If you make it hard to get a visa ($100k fee) AND impossible to stay forever (green card backlog), why would a genius come to America?
Canada is right next door. I am sitting here right now. The Canadian government is handing out visas to tech workers like candy. They see what is happening. They are waiting with open arms.
The Real Impact
So where does this leave us?
We have a policy that punishes small companies. We have a backlog that punishes workers. And we have a billionaire podcaster who is right about the problem but powerless to fix it.
The irony is thick. Musk helped get Trump elected. Now Trump's policies are hurting the very pipeline of talent Musk says is "vital" for his companies.
The big tech giants will be fine. They will pay the fees. They will hoard the talent. The gap between the big guys and the little guys will get wider.
And the workers? They are pawns. They are numbers on a spreadsheet.
I talked to a young coder last week. He is in Mumbai. He wanted to come to Silicon Valley. He has a job offer from a mid-sized AI firm. But now, with the $100,000 fee, the offer is on hold. The company cannot afford the risk.
"I will probably go to Toronto," he told me. "Or maybe London."
That is the reality. America is putting up a "For Sale" sign on its borders, but the price tag is too high for the people who actually build things.