Elon Musk’s Story Highlights Harm Caused by Immigration Restrictions
A recent Washington Post article shows Elon Musk was, for a time, working illegally in the US, and subject to deportation. He was able to remain in the US and eventually legalize his status because law enforcement was either unaware of his status or chose to look the other way. Much of the commentary on this issue focuses on Musk’s hypocrisy: he has since become an advocate of hardline policies on illegal migration, under which people like Musk himself would be deported.
But Musk’s story also highlights the harm caused by immigration restrictions. Cato Institute immigration policy expert Alex Nowrasteh explains:
What bothers me in the WaPo article is how destructive the US immigration system is. It almost didn’t allow Elon Musk to settle here and build several innovative firms, push technological breakthroughs, and build enormous consumer surplus and shareholder value. Musk is a 1 in a billion innovator and businessman. If the US immigration system blocked at least one other Musk-type entrepreneur from coming here in the last century, then this should make intelligent nativists rethink their position. Few of them would want to kick Musk out now, but they support rules and enforcement that could stop the next Musk from coming or staying here. Musk was bright before he got a work visa, but there was little indication that he’d become the wealthiest man in the world. The conceit of immigration central planners almost cost us Musk’s talents. Let’s stop ignoring the right tail of the distribution and error on the side of letting more people in – one of them could take us to Neptune. I hope that readers of this story will come away with the same lesson instead of focusing on the hypocrisy.
Had Musk been forced to return to South Africa, he probably would never have had the opportunity to make major innovations and found Tesla and SpaceX.
Immigrants contribute disproportionately to a wide variety of entrepreneurial and scientific innovations. As discussed more fully in my article “Immigration and the Economic Freedom of Natives,” that means large-scale immigration restrictions inevitably keep out significant numbers of people who might otherwise become major innovators or make important scientific br
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