Billionaire Elon Musk today visited the southern border in Texas, United States, which it shares with Mexico to provide what he called an “unfiltered” view of the ongoing migrant crisis. During his visit to Eagle Pass, a city that last week declared a state of emergency due to the extraordinary influx of thousands of migrants, he was joined by Texas Representative Tony Gonzales. The owner of SpaceX, Tesla and X.com also took to his social media platform to livestream his visit.
Mr Musk, who has been posting frequently about the migrant situation on X (formerly Twitter) was seen wearing a cowboy hat and aviator sunglasses in the live video. He added in the video that he would go around and speak with officials and “eyeball the situation to get the real story.”
“This is real-time, unfiltered. What you see is what I see,” he said in the video.
Went to the Eagle Pass border crossing to see what’s really going on pic.twitter.com/ADYY2XvAKT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 29, 2023
As an immigrant himself, Mr Musk went on to declare that he is “extremely pro-immigration,” but he added that immigration has to be extended such that law-abiding, productive immigrants may enter the country lawfully while keeping out those who will break the law. “To be clear we’re both very much in favour of expanded legal immigration. I think anyone who is hardworking and honest and is really gonna add the economy, we should let them in. But what we’re seeing here are in some cases some pretty extreme individuals coming through … obviously not suggesting everyone is like this,” he continued.
Discussing the situation in New York where one lakh migrants have entered, Mr Musk said that it is “leading to a collapse of social services where even America’s largest city, New York, is buckling under the pressure of just how many illegal immigrants are going to New York. If New York can’t handle it, well pretty much no part of the country can. So if we don’t do something soon we’re just gonna have, like I said, a collapse in social services as we’re already seeing in New York.”
At one point in the video, Mr Musk questioned if he was still live-streaming on the social network after one of his streams appeared to be cut short owing to technical issues. Just before the screen went dark, he said, “I was a bit worried that this might – so many people might go on it that it crashes. Maybe not working anymore, let’s see.”
He also added that the network was not good and “it would be helpful to have some Starlink perhaps” after he came back online.
