No, Elon Musk didn’t say Italians, Japanese should stay in their respective countries

Entrepreneur Elon Musk, now an adviser to President Donald Trump, has echoed the administration’s talking points criticizing undocumented immigrants, but claims he said Italians and Japanese should stay in their respective countries overreach. 

"Elon Musk says Italians should stay in Italy and the Japanese in Japan," a Jan. 28 Threads post said. "Then why the hell is this white European South African in North America?"

Musk is a South African-born immigrant.

This Threads post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The Threads post linked to a Jan. 27 X post as evidence. The X post included the same text as the Threads post, but also shared a video in which Musk said: "I think there is value to a culture, we don’t want Japan to disappear, we don’t want Italy as a culture to disappear, we don’t want France as a culture to disappear, I think we have to have to maintain the sort of reasonable cultural identity of the various countries or they simply will not be those countries. You know, Italy is the people of Italy. The buildings are there, but really what is Italy? Italy is the people of Italy." 

The video is authentic; Musk shared another X post with the same clip Jan. 25. It comes from a 2023 conference that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party organized. 

His comments at the event included imploring Italians to "make more Italians to save Italy’s culture," touting the benefits of legal immigration and warning of the dangers of falling birth rates, CNN reported.

"My advice to all government leaders and people is make sure you have children to create a new generation," Musk said, "or the culture of Italy, Japan and France will disappear."

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stated on February 20, 2025 in una publicación en Facebook

"Nueva orden ejecutiva desde la Casa Blanca tiene identificado a más de 47,000 cubanos con residencia legal los cuales serán puestos en proceso de deportación por haber viajado a Cuba después de su aprobación de asilo político".

That’s different from saying Italians and Japanese should stay in Italy and Japan, respectively. 

And, as fact-checking outlet Snopes noted, Musk was responding to a question about whether immigration could stabilize countries’ populations amid declining birth rates. 

Musk said countries couldn’t depend on immigration because, for example, "you’d have to have the entire United States emigrate there twice every generation to simply maintain numbers just for China."

He then made the comment that appears in the video the Threads post cited. 

We rate claims Musk said Italians should stay in Italy and Japanese should stay in Japan False.