Hugh Dougherty
DAILY BEAST
Sat, October 26, 2024
MediaNews Group/The Mercury News
Elon Musk worked illegally on a student visa and faced concerns he would be “deported” when he started life in the United States, a bombshell report revealed Saturday.
The billionaire South African-born immigrant also admitted in an email that he “had no legal right to stay in the country” when he ditched his studies and founded a company which he later sold for more than $300 million, The Washington Post reported. His brother was also here illegally, committing what one expert called “fraud upon entry.”
The revelation comes after Musk, the Tesla, X, SpaceX and Starlink CEO went all-in on supporting Donald Trump and repeatedly accused Democrats of trying to flood the country with immigrants who cross the border illegally, a conspiracy theory which has become mainstream in the Republican party. Bloomberg called him “X’s biggest promote of anti-immigrant conspiracies.”
His ally Trump is advocating the mass deportation of millions of undocumented migrants. The former president has also ranted about “chain migration.”
But The Post’s detailed reporting about Musk’s own immigration journey shows that the world’s richest man abused his student visa to found his first company, Global Link Information Network, which became Zip2. Investors were so concerned that he could be “deported” that they sought advice from an immigration attorney.
Musk was born in South Africa and, aged 18, obtained Canadian citizenship through his Canada-born mother, Maye. He first studied in Canada, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, which gave him a student visa.
In 1995 he moved to Palo Alto where he had a place at Stanford University, which would have given him another student visa. Student visas give holders the right to work part-time to support their studies.
But The Post revealed that Musk never enrolled at all–which would had invalidated his student visa. Instead he worked on his start-up. Dropping out of education to work, even if technically unpaid, is straightforwardly illegal, Leon Fresco, a former immigration attorney at the Department of Justice told the newspaper.
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk reacts next to Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump.
“If you do anything that helps to facilitate revenue creation, such as design code or try to make sales in furtherance of revenue creation, then you’re in trouble,” Fresco said.
Musk has said he recruited his brother to help him run the company. But Kimbal has said he actively lied to border agents, having previously been refused entry at an airport on the grounds that he was working illegally in the U.S. when he was trying to return from visiting their mother in Canada. He got a friend to drive him over the border and lied that they were going to see David Letterman’s show so that he could make what he has described in an interview with journalist Graham Bensinger as a critical meeting with investors.
“That’s fraud on entry,” Ira Kurzban, the former president and general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers told The Post. “That would make him inadmissible and permanently barred from the United States,” he said, unless the penalties were waived. Additionally, hiring someone without the legal right to work in the U.S. is a federal crime.
The Musks' illegal status worried one investor, Mohr Davidow Ventures, so much that when, in 1996, it put $3 million into the company the agreement included a clause giving the brothers and a third person 45 days to obtain legal status.
Derek Proudian, who was on the Zip2 board and later became CEO told The Post the sentiment of investors was, “We don’t want our founder being deported.” He added, “Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.”
Another investor told the newspaper anonymously, “Perhaps naively we never examined whether he was a legal citizen.”
The Post reported that the attorney used by the company told both men not to tell the full truth about their “leadership” roles and to scrub their resumes of American addresses.
At this 2013 panel talk, Kimbal Musk said he had Elon had been
Zip2 was sold to Compaq in 1999 for $305 million, with Musk netting $22 million. The company set him on a path which saw him become the CEO of PayPal which in turn led to his involvement in Tesla and founding of SpaceX. He is currently worth $274 billion, according to Forbes. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002. False statements about past immigration status in a citizenship application are illegal and can be grounds for revocation. It is unknown if Musk made any false statements.
In 2005, in an email to Tesla’s co-founders which was submitted to a California court, Musk wrote about going to Stanford, “Actually, I didn’t really care much for the degree, but I had no money for a lab and no legal right to stay in the country, so that seemed like a good way to solve both issues.”
In 2013 the Musk brothers appeared on a panel at the Miliken Institute conference where Kimball said they had been “illegal immigrants,” and Musk jumped it to say it was “a gray area.”
The Beast has asked Musk‘s attorney, Alex Spiro, for comment. The Post said that he, Musk and the manager of Musk’s family office had not responded to their request for comment.
Biden calls out Musk over report that the Tesla CEO once worked in the US illegally
Sat, October 26, 2024
MediaNews Group/The Mercury News
Elon Musk worked illegally on a student visa and faced concerns he would be “deported” when he started life in the United States, a bombshell report revealed Saturday.
The billionaire South African-born immigrant also admitted in an email that he “had no legal right to stay in the country” when he ditched his studies and founded a company which he later sold for more than $300 million, The Washington Post reported. His brother was also here illegally, committing what one expert called “fraud upon entry.”
The revelation comes after Musk, the Tesla, X, SpaceX and Starlink CEO went all-in on supporting Donald Trump and repeatedly accused Democrats of trying to flood the country with immigrants who cross the border illegally, a conspiracy theory which has become mainstream in the Republican party. Bloomberg called him “X’s biggest promote of anti-immigrant conspiracies.”
His ally Trump is advocating the mass deportation of millions of undocumented migrants. The former president has also ranted about “chain migration.”
But The Post’s detailed reporting about Musk’s own immigration journey shows that the world’s richest man abused his student visa to found his first company, Global Link Information Network, which became Zip2. Investors were so concerned that he could be “deported” that they sought advice from an immigration attorney.
Musk was born in South Africa and, aged 18, obtained Canadian citizenship through his Canada-born mother, Maye. He first studied in Canada, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, which gave him a student visa.
In 1995 he moved to Palo Alto where he had a place at Stanford University, which would have given him another student visa. Student visas give holders the right to work part-time to support their studies.
But The Post revealed that Musk never enrolled at all–which would had invalidated his student visa. Instead he worked on his start-up. Dropping out of education to work, even if technically unpaid, is straightforwardly illegal, Leon Fresco, a former immigration attorney at the Department of Justice told the newspaper.
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk reacts next to Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump.
“If you do anything that helps to facilitate revenue creation, such as design code or try to make sales in furtherance of revenue creation, then you’re in trouble,” Fresco said.
Musk has said he recruited his brother to help him run the company. But Kimbal has said he actively lied to border agents, having previously been refused entry at an airport on the grounds that he was working illegally in the U.S. when he was trying to return from visiting their mother in Canada. He got a friend to drive him over the border and lied that they were going to see David Letterman’s show so that he could make what he has described in an interview with journalist Graham Bensinger as a critical meeting with investors.
“That’s fraud on entry,” Ira Kurzban, the former president and general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers told The Post. “That would make him inadmissible and permanently barred from the United States,” he said, unless the penalties were waived. Additionally, hiring someone without the legal right to work in the U.S. is a federal crime.
The Musks' illegal status worried one investor, Mohr Davidow Ventures, so much that when, in 1996, it put $3 million into the company the agreement included a clause giving the brothers and a third person 45 days to obtain legal status.
Derek Proudian, who was on the Zip2 board and later became CEO told The Post the sentiment of investors was, “We don’t want our founder being deported.” He added, “Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.”
Another investor told the newspaper anonymously, “Perhaps naively we never examined whether he was a legal citizen.”
The Post reported that the attorney used by the company told both men not to tell the full truth about their “leadership” roles and to scrub their resumes of American addresses.
At this 2013 panel talk, Kimbal Musk said he had Elon had been
Zip2 was sold to Compaq in 1999 for $305 million, with Musk netting $22 million. The company set him on a path which saw him become the CEO of PayPal which in turn led to his involvement in Tesla and founding of SpaceX. He is currently worth $274 billion, according to Forbes. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002. False statements about past immigration status in a citizenship application are illegal and can be grounds for revocation. It is unknown if Musk made any false statements.
In 2005, in an email to Tesla’s co-founders which was submitted to a California court, Musk wrote about going to Stanford, “Actually, I didn’t really care much for the degree, but I had no money for a lab and no legal right to stay in the country, so that seemed like a good way to solve both issues.”
In 2013 the Musk brothers appeared on a panel at the Miliken Institute conference where Kimball said they had been “illegal immigrants,” and Musk jumped it to say it was “a gray area.”
The Beast has asked Musk‘s attorney, Alex Spiro, for comment. The Post said that he, Musk and the manager of Musk’s family office had not responded to their request for comment.
Biden calls out Musk over report that the Tesla CEO once worked in the US illegally
The Associated Press
Sun, October 27, 2024
NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden slammed Elon Musk for hypocrisy on immigration after a published report that the Tesla CEO once worked illegally in the United States. The South Africa-born Musk denies the allegation.
“That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here. No, I’m serious. He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. And he’s talking about all these illegals coming our way?” Biden said while campaigning on Saturday in Pittsburgh at a union hall.
The Washington Post reported that Musk worked illegally in the country while on a student visa. The newspaper, citing company documents, former business associates, and court documents, said Musk arrived in Palo Alto, California in 1995 for a graduate program at Stanford University “but never enrolled in courses, working instead on his startup. ”
Musk wrote on X in reply to a video post of Biden’s comments: “I was in fact allowed to work in the US.” Musk added, “The Biden puppet is lying.”
Investors in Musk’s company, Zip2, were concerned about the possibility of their founder being deported, according to the report, and gave him a deadline for obtaining a work visa. The newspaper also cited a 2005 email from Musk to his Tesla co-founders acknowledging that he did not have authorization to be in the U.S. when he started Zip2.
According to the account, that email was submitted as evidence in a now-closed California defamation lawsuit and said that Musk had applied to Stanford so he could stay in the country legally.
Musk is today the world’s richest man. He has committed more than $70 million to help Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and other GOP candidates win on Nov. 5, and is one of the party’s biggest donors this campaign season. He has been headlining events in the White House race’s final stretch, often echoing Trump’s dark rhetoric against immigration.
Trump has pledged to give Musk a role in his administration if he wins next month.
There was no immediate response to messages left with X and Tesla seeking Musk’s comment.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
Elon Musk worked in US illegally in 1995 after quitting school – report
Edward Helmore
Sat, October 26, 2024
Elon Musk in Beverly Hills, California, on 6 May 2024.Photograph: David Swanson/Reuters
Elon Musk briefly worked illegally in the US after abandoning a graduate studies program in California, according to a Washington Post report that contrasted the episode with the South African multibillionaire’s anti-immigration views.
The boss of Tesla and SpaceX, who has in recent weeks supported Donald Trump’s campaign for a second presidency while promoting the Republican White House nominee’s opposition to “open borders” on his X social media site, has previously maintained that his transition from student to entrepreneur was a “legal grey area”.
But the Washington Post reported Saturday that the world’s wealthiest individual was almost certainly working in the US without correct authorization for a period in 1995 after he dropped out of Stanford University to work on his debut company, Zip2, which sold for about $300m four years later.
Legal experts said foreign students cannot drop out of school to build a company even if they are not getting paid. The Post also noted that – prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks agains the US in 2001 – regulation for student visas was more lax.
“If you do anything that helps to facilitate revenue creation, such as design code or try to make sales in furtherance of revenue creation, then you’re in trouble,” Leon Fresco, a former US justice department immigration litigator, told the outlet.
But the Post also acknowledged: “While overstaying a student visa is somewhat common and officials have at times turned a blind eye to it, it remains illegal.”
Musk has previously said: “I was legally there, but I was meant to be doing student work. I was allowed to do work sort of supporting whatever.”
Musk employs 121,000 people at Tesla, about 13,000 at SpaceX and nearly 3,000 at X. The scrutiny of his immigration status after dropping out of Stanford comes after Trump has touted his desire for Musk to play a high-profile role focused on government efficiency in a second Trump administration if voters return him to office at the expense of Kamala Harris in the 5 November election.
Musk in turn has accused the vice-president and her fellow Democrats of “importing voters” through illegal and temporary protected status immigration. During a recent Trump campaign appearance, he compared the US-Mexico border to a “zombie apocalypse” – even as he had also previously described himself as “extremely pro immigrant, being one myself”.
Bloomberg News recently published an analysis of more than 53,000 posts sent from Musk’s X account, finding that the entrepreneur’s output turned increasingly political this election year.
“In 2024, immigration and voter fraud has become Musk’s most frequently posted and engaged with policy topic, garnering about 10bn views,” the outlet said. “Musk posted more than 1,300 times about the topic overall, with more than 330 posts in the past 2 months alone.”
Bloomberg described Musk – who paid $44bn for X, then Twitter, in 2022 – as the platform’s single most important influencer and has reportedly ordered site engineers to push his posts into users’ feeds. That makes Musk “the most widely read person on the site today”, Bloomberg said.
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