The following is an open letter to Elon Musk, on the subject of the H-1B visa, which has stirred up a considerable, very noisy, and somewhat profane debate on X. Mr. Musk posted some, shall we say, strong sentiments about those who criticise the H-1B, claiming he will “go to war on the issue” with those who disagree with him.

So be it.

I disagree with you, Mr. Musk.

Because of my experiences with the US immigration system, and my own personal and professional background, I believe I am rather better qualified than most – including you – to comment on the benefits and drawbacks (mostly the latter) of the H-1B system.

You claim to have been through the H-1B system – according to your X post – and to have received a green card, that then allowed you to stay in the US, become an American citizen, and start up the many companies that have produced hundreds of billions of dollars in value for your customers, and for you. This is very much to the good. You are a success story and deserve to be praised as such. You have created jobs, infrastructure, and investment, to a degree that virtually no one else has since the days of the so-called (and not actually particularly terrible) “robber barons” of the late 19th Century.

But your personal story does not mean the H-1B itself is a good idea. I also went through the H-1B, and I have seen first-hand just what an awful system it is.

The H-1B visa system is not designed to supply America with the best and brightest talent from around the world. It is instead designed to perform two key functions, neither of which serves the interests of Americans.

The first function is to give large tech companies in the US the ability to hire non-American graduates from American universities. That might sound like a noble goal. In fact, all it is doing, is trapping tens of thousands of university graduates every year into a system of, essentially, indentured servitude. I know, because I was one of them. Foreign students who graduate from American universities – a very substantial portion of them Indian or Chinese by origin – must go through a system that appears to be designed specifically to grind down any possible resistance to corporate America, or freedom of thought. The people who languish in the H-1B system for the long-term, are trapped in a prison of fear and self-loathing, stuck at companies and in industries that treat them as disposable labour, up until they finally get that golden ticket of the much-coveted American green card.

The second function is to permit American corporations to offshore and outsource jobs that should, by rights, go to native-born (usually, though not always, White) Americans, and send those jobs to lower-cost (and lower-quality) locations in India and other parts of the world. Outsourcing companies wantonly abuse this system, by sending Indian engineers over to the US on H-1B visas to sit next to American employees, monitor their every move, learn everything they can about their job functions, and then take those jobs back to India, where they will sit in Bangalore or Hyderabad or other Indian cities and do the same job for one-fifth the price – and one-twentieth the quality.

The data on H-1B applications, authorisations, and certifications, prove my view and refute yours. The top 20 companies, in terms of number of Labour Certificate Authorisations, account for 55.6% of all LCAs, and of those top 20, 7 are outsourcing companies, while the rest are tech companies, professional services companies, and a couple of banks (plus Wal-Mart).

The people who work for tech companies and banks, end up stuck in a particularly awful kind of Hell. They must never, ever make a mistake or speak out of turn. If they lose their jobs, they must quickly find a new one, or face deportation back to their countries of origin – predominantly India or China. Since life in both countries is usually of a vastly lower level of quality than it is in the US, that gives a very clear incentive for tech and bank workers on H-1Bs to keep their mouths shut, work like dogs, and swallow every last bit of abuse their employers dish out. They are often the first in line for layoffs, and the last in line for salary increases, better benefits, and promotions. They cannot start a business, own property, or easily change employers, unless they go to another big corporation that is willing and able to pay the very high legal fees required to bring over another H-1B. Because of the antiquated and highly confusing American visa system, once their visa stamp runs out, they must leave the US to apply for a new one, which can take weeks or months, and they are not guaranteed of being able to return to the US once they leave.

I know how awful this life can be. That was me, for 12 years. It can be, and often is, a lucrative existence, if you work for a big bank or tech company that pays you well. But life in a walled garden, is still life in a prison. Are you truly foolish enough to advocate for that, given you originally came from South Africa?

The outsourcing companies are particularly pernicious in their use of the H-1B. If you look at the data, you will see that the average salary associated with the LCAs across those 7 outsourcers is US$115K, which should in theory translate to a significant chunk of tax revenue to the US IRS – but what the data DO NOT say, is that those H-1Bs rarely stay more than a few months to a year, before going back to India. And they take jobs with them, back to India, to become locally paid employees of TCS, Wipro, Infosys, and other Indian outsourcers. Those jobs could and by rights SHOULD have gone to American citizens, to do the software engineering, data architecture, and systems maintenance jobs that will now go to India.

The quality of the work done in India is, as I can personally attest from long and terrible experience with Indian software engineers, AWFUL. Companies that send those jobs back to India, save money in the short term, only to lose it in the long term. This has long been the tried-and-tested story of outsourcing to India. The result is always, without exception, bad-quality software that requires substantial investment to fix, stabilise, and improve.

When I was working at my third company in the US, we moved the IT DEV and QA team from India to Russia. It was a night-and-day change in terms of our ability to get things done. The Russian developers were certainly much more expensive. But they were also vastly better, which meant they wrote the code well and properly from the start, and maintained it much more effectively. If they cost three times more than their Indian counterparts, they were also ten times more productive and effective – so, in the end, the whole organisation won out.

You and Mr. Vivek Ramaswamy have both insisted that the H-1B is the best possible way to bring great talent into the US for high-paying jobs in the growth sectors of the US economy. You are both wrong. Your “solution” to America’s problems appears to be to import more Indians, to work as, effectively, coolies for a new set of colonial masters.

This is a staggering insult to both Indians and Americans. Having lived in both countries, I know this far better than you do, from both sides.

Indians will never develop their country properly, if they cannot take responsibility for their own problems, and focus their resources on fixing their own colossal social and moral problems. Bringing millions of poorly educated Indians, whose values are entirely antithetical to those of Americans, compounds America’s problems. It does not solve them. Nor does it result in any real net benefit to India, which has profound issues with its own economic development, that begin with the actually very poor quality of its overall human capital.

You may be surprised to learn that Indians understand this. They know quite well that America does not owe India anything, including jobs – and India does not owe America anything either. You evidently do not know these things.

More generally, Americans do not need more Indians – or Chinese, or anyone else – in their midst. America has been inundated by a flood of new arrivals for the past 60 years, predominantly from low-IQ countries, without pause or thought for the consequences on America’s culture and way of life. This has resulted in the degeneration of American infrastructure, IQ, educational standards, healthcare, and social and moral cohesion.

The entire US immigration system, from bottom to top and back again, must be completely overhauled – preferably by tearing the whole thing apart and starting over, from sound fundamentals.

The interests of native-born Americans must become a priority, as they have never been for three generations and 9 Presidents – including President Trump.

The US border must be shut, COMPLETELY, to ALL new arrivals, with the US Army posted all along the southern border with orders to shoot to kill anyone who seeks to invade the country and leave the bodies in the desert, as a warning to others.

India does precisely that last part, by the way. For some reason, the US does not.

The USA must deport the many tens of millions of illegal immigrants who have come through since the passage of the Hart-Celler Act in 1965. Further, America must stop accepting ALL new legal immigrants – yes, ALL – for a period of up to 50 years, to permit those left to acclimate and acculturate. Even that is unlikely to be fully successful, given the depth and seriousness of the rot that now exists within the guts of the American body politic.

Birthright citizenship, of any kind, must end. Citizenship through marriage must be accompanied by extremely stringent language requirements, and must require actual proven residency tests of not less than 5 years. Russia does this, and much more, to ensure it only takes in people who will contribute to the Fatherland – and their system is far from perfect. There is no reason why the US cannot improve upon that.

Beyond that period, American immigration policy must, by definition, become much more discriminatory, focusing only on bringing in those who speak English fluently, are Christian, very preferably are White, have European cultural values, and seek to establish and build families that will share and propagate that faith and those values under the protections and freedoms of the American Constitution.

If you are serious about helping President-elect Trump save America, and you are actually serious about your oath of citizenship, then you will agree with such a policy, no matter how supposedly “racist” or “xenophobic” it might be.

The fact that you do not, tells me you are merely a paper American, whose true loyalty is only to money, not to Jesus Christ, who is God, or to Truth – which amounts to the same thing.

I am perfectly well aware that my proposed solutions would rule out the possibility that someone like me, who is not White, who was not Christian until early 2019 – and who went to an American university, got a job in the US, contributed many tens of thousands of dollars of tax revenue to the IRS, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on products and services from American-domiciled businesses, and invested in American companies to create jobs and opportunities – could arrive in the US ever again in my lifetime.

I do not care.

Unlike you, I am able to separate what is good for America, from what is good for me – because, unlike you, I love the true spirit of America, of its Constitution, and its Founders.

I am not American. But I love America – or at least, I love what America USED TO BE – and I want to see what was once the greatest country on Earth, and was once a beacon of hope and freedom to all of Mankind, become that again.

This is not something minor for me, nor is it a new interest. My views on the subject of US immigration policy in general, and the H-1B visa in particular, are a matter of public record, because I have been writing on these subjects for TWELVE YEARS. I went through three layoffs during my time in the US, and because of President Trump’s crackdown on the visa category in his first term, I had to leave the country after my third one.

Yet I bear President Trump no ill will whatsoever. Quite the contrary, in fact. I support him and wish him well, and I truly hope he succeeds in destroying the Deep State and re-establishing the rule of law in America. I have vocally and publicly supported him since late 2015. It is because I wish President Trump well, that I am forced to respond to those, like you, who insist on misleading him about the supposed “benefits” of a wantonly abused and terrible visa system.

Mr. Musk, if you are serious about standing up for your views on the H-1B, instead of insulting and shouting down anyone who disagrees with you, I am willing to interact with you in a debate on your own platform, to exchange views on the H-1B visa. My willingness to do so comes in part from a very interesting discussion in my Telegram channel’s chat section, and in part from my own experiences going through the H-1B grinder.

I am a nobody with a tiny but highly loyal audience. I would very much prefer to remain a nobody with a tiny but highly loyal audience. But your refusal to listen to ordinary Americans about their justified anger and concerns with the H-1B in particular, and the American immigration system in general, is simply anti-American. That cannot stand.

My terms for a debate are very simple. I will be happy to join you in an X Spaces discussion, for up to 2 hours. You are welcome to bring anyone you choose, including Mr. Ramaswamy, or even Mr. Trump, should you so wish.

You may speak for as long as you want, without interruption by me – and you may mute me while you speak, if you would like, to ensure I do not interrupt at all.

I will accept any time limits you impose on me, of not less than 2 minutes.

During the discussion, I will do my level best to avoid straw-men, ad hominem attacks, and sloppy argumentation, and I will expect you to hold yourself to that same standard.

At all times, I will strive to keep my arguments rooted in facts, evidence, and personal knowledge and experience, and I expect and require you to do the same.

At no point will I show my face, and I will use a voice modifier to hide my identity – these measures are non-negotiable. I have my own reasons for insisting upon them.

Mr. Musk, I look forward to your response to my debate proposal. You may contact me here.

Yours faithfully,

Didact