Anti-immigrant immigrant billionaire Elon Musk was in the United States illegally and working when he founded his first American business venture, a report claims.
According to the Washington Post, Musk was planning to enroll in a doctoral program at Stanford University in order to obtain a student visa while co-founding the technology company Zip2, but dropped out days before classes started. Legal experts told the newspaper that the move revoked his right to work in the country.
“If you do something that promotes revenue generation, like designing code or trying to sell to promote revenue generation, you’re going to run into problems,” said Leon Fresco, an immigration litigator at the Justice Department. “It will be,” he told the Post.
Musk’s status has led some investors to question his status and demand that he obtain a proper visa.
“Their immigration status did not allow them to be legally employed in the United States to run a company,” Derek Proudian, a Zip2 director at the time, told the Post.
The Tesla CEO previously described his visa status at the time as a “gray area,” and his brother Kimbal Musk described him and Elon as “illegal immigrants” in 2013.
It is not clear whether Musk lied to U.S. authorities, but legal experts believe that if he had told immigration authorities that he was in the country illegally, his subsequent visa and citizenship applications would have been at risk. He pointed out that it would have been done.
Musk, now the world’s richest man, has thrown away tens of millions of dollars and his full support for Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, citing illegal immigration as his biggest concern. Musk has personally amplified violent conspiracy theories against Haitians and Venezuelans living in the United States and has been a vocal supporter of President Trump’s “bloody” mass deportation plan.
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