Having battled US bureaucracy, I reckon there’s plenty for Musk to do

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Washington: Poor old Elon Musk. The world’s most beleaguered billionaire has lost something like $US100 billion ($159 billion) since December thanks to Tesla’s falling stock price. Now his electric cars are being set on fire, shot at, defaced or otherwise vandalised all over the US in protest at his cost-cutting rampage through the US government.

A burnt-out Tesla Cybertruck in Seattle.Credit: AP

US President Donald Trump says it’s domestic terrorism, and has speculated the perpetrators are being paid by political operatives.

Whether you believe that or not, it’s certainly more evidence of a bitterly divided, vengeful America in which Musk – through his work and public statements – has become a key combatant.

But as someone who has battled his fair share of American bureaucracy lately, I’ll say this: there’s plenty Musk could be doing to improve government efficiency, and somebody needs to do it.

The US does not make it easy to move here. It means navigating a Byzantine visa application portal that will refresh and log you out in the time it takes to photocopy a passport. I was fortunate enough to have some help expediting the process; otherwise, lord knows how long it would have taken.

Elon Musk flashes his DOGE T-shirt to the media as he walks on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday.Credit: AP

But the fun really begins when you land and start dealing with the Social Security Administration (SSA). A social security number is required to do pretty much anything in the US, though you will find banks and other services will make exceptions for a new arrival.

Obtaining one requires an in-person appointment at an SSA office. My nearest was a grim, Soviet-style place in Washington’s administrative district, where the first available slot was about a week away.

Your appointment time bears no resemblance to when you will be seen. Upon arrival, you register for a ticket number, and these are called out over the alarmingly loud intercom in a seemingly random order.

Sadly, the instructions don’t make clear that, in addition to your passport, you need to bring what’s known as an I-94 admission record, which you get when you clear customs.

This used to be stamped in your passport, but now it’s digital. However, the SSA still requires you to print and physically bring your I-94 on a sheet of paper – as I found out the hard way after waiting more than two hours. When I suggested this seemed to defeat the point of digitisation, I was told flatly: “Congress makes the rules.”

Things went better the second time. But despite having a fresh, five-year US visa, apparently my documents needed to be verified again to get my social security card. I was dispatched from the appointment with a printed confirmation (they really love paper) that says this could take up to four weeks.

After six weeks I was inclined to make inquiries, but there’s no way to do it online. You have to call and hold for hours or book another appointment, both of which seemed too excruciating to contemplate.

It’s not just in the US government I’ve found systems wanting. In Canada, my train that was supposed to leave Montreal at 9am ultimately departed at 3pm, moved three kilometres down the track, stopped for another two hours and then went back to Montreal. The reason? A freight train had derailed (at midday, I later found out).

And connecting my home internet was a trial beyond belief. After two days of back-and-forth phone calls, a tech visit and assurances that the outage would be fixed soon, someone finally pointed out the real problem: I hadn’t agreed to the online terms and conditions.

All of these things worked out in the end. The Wi-Fi switched on, I flew home from Montreal and, after nearly eight weeks, my social security card finally arrived.

But having dipped my toes into North American life over the past two months, I’m convinced there’s plenty of waste and inefficiency for Musk to flush out. If only he would focus his many talents on the real problems, not the stuff of culture wars and conspiracies.

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