Elon Musk was an illegal migrant worker who abused his student visa

Elon Musk he was working illegally on a student visa and feared he would be “deported” when he started life in the United States, a shocking report revealed on Saturday.

The billionaire South African-born immigrant also admitted in an email that he “had no right to be in the country” when he dropped out of college and started a company that he later sold for more than $300 million. Washington Post. reported. His brother was also here illegally and committed what one expert called “entry fraud.”

The revelation comes after Musk, Tesla’s CEO, X, SpaceX and Starlink went all out in support of the company Donald Trump and repeatedly accused Democrats of trying to flood the country with immigrants crossing the border illegally, a conspiracy theory that has become mainstream in the Republican Party. Bloomberg called him “the biggest promoter of anti-immigrant conspiracies through X.”

His ally is Trump advocating mass deportations millions of illegal immigrants. The former president also condemned “chain migration.”

But Post detailed reports on Musk’s immigration journey show that the world’s richest man abused his student visa to start his first company, Global Link Information Network, which became Zip2. Investors were so concerned that he might be “deported” that they sought advice from an immigration lawyer.

Musk was born in South Africa and acquired Canadian citizenship at the age of 18 through his Canadian-born mother, Maye. He first studied in Canada, then moved to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a student visa.

In 1995, he moved to Palo Alto, where he had a place at Stanford University, which would give him another student visa. Student visas give holders the right to work part-time to support their studies.

But Post revealed that Musk did not enroll at all, which would have invalidated his student visa. Instead, he worked on his startup. Dropping out of school to go to work, even if it’s technically unpaid, is simply illegal, Leon Fresco, a former immigration lawyer at the Justice Department, told the newspaper.

“If you’re doing anything that helps generate revenue, like project code, or trying to sell to generate revenue, you’re in trouble,” Fresco said.

Musk said he recruited his brother to help him run the company. However, Kimbal said he actively lied to border officials because he had previously been denied entry at the airport on the grounds that he was working illegally in the U.S. while trying to return from visiting their mother in Canada. He asked a friend to drive him across the border and lied that they were going to a David Letterman show so he could do what he wanted to do. described in an interview with journalist Graham Bensinger as a critical meeting with investors.

“It’s an entry fraud,” said Ira Kurzban, former president and general counsel of the U.S. Immigration Lawyers’ Office Post. “This would make him inadmissible and permanently barred from entering the United States,” he said, unless the penalties are waived. Additionally, employing a person without the right to work in the U.S. is a federal crime.

Musk’s illegal status concerned one investor, Mohr Davidow Ventures, so much that when he paid the company $3 million in 1996, the contract included a clause giving the brothers and a third party 45 days to obtain legal status.

Derek Proudian, who served on Zip2’s board and later became CEO, said Post investor sentiment was: “We don’t want our founder deported.” He added: “Their immigration status was not what it needed to be to be legally employed by a company in the US.”

Another investor told the newspaper anonymously: “Perhaps naively, we never checked whether he was a legal citizen.”

The Post reported that a lawyer the company used told both men not to tell the whole truth about their “leadership” roles and to clear their resumes with U.S. addresses.

Zip2 was sold to Compaq in 1999 for $305 million, with Musk earning $22 million. The company set him on a path that led him to become CEO of PayPal, which in turn led to his involvement with Tesla and the founding of SpaceX. His fortune is currently $274 billion, According to Forbes. He became a US citizen in 2002. Falsely representing previous immigration status on a citizenship application is illegal and may be grounds for revocation of citizenship. It is not known whether Musk made any false statements.

In 2005, in an e-mail to Tesla’s co-founders that was submitted to a California court, Musk wrote about going to Stanford: “I didn’t really care much about the degree, but I had no money for a lab and no right to stay in the country, so it seemed This is a good way to solve both issues.

In 2013, the Musk brothers appeared on a panel at the Miliken Institute conference, where Kimball stated that they were “illegal immigrants” and Musk immediately stated that it was a “gray area”.

The Beast reached out to Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, for comment. Post said he, Musk and the manager of Musk’s family office did not respond to their request for comment.