ILLEGAL ALIEN

Elon Musk Could Lose His Citizenship For Lying On Immigration Forms


Amber DaSilva
Fri, November 1, 2024 


Photo: Michael M. Santiago (Getty Images)

Elon Musk has been on a political kick recently, backing former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump in his various crusades — including his fight against undocumented immigration. Ironic, then, that Musk himself could risk having his citizenship stripped for that same crime.

Earlier this week a report from the Washington Post looked into Musk’s history with immigration, and found that the he began his stay in the United States with a student visa — a visa whose bounds he immediately exceeded by dropping out of school to start a business. Wired looked into the laws around Musk’s actions, as far as he’s publicly admitted, and found there may well be an immigration case against one of America’s leading eugenicists:


Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell Law School and faculty director of its Immigration Law and Policy Program, says that it’s not clear that if Musk worked in the US without authorization and attested he hadn’t, that would be considered important enough to denaturalize him. However, he says, “on purely legal grounds, this would justify revoking citizenship, because if he had told the truth, he would not have been eligible for an H1-B, a green card, or naturalization.”

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US law—specifically, 8 U.S.C. § 1451—allows for the revocation of naturalization if citizenship was “procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.” The classic example of the law’s application is to former Nazis who ultimately had their citizenship stripped in the US after the exposure of their hidden pasts. But the law, experts say, covers lying about having worked without authorization, and there are several points in the process at which an immigrant has to attest, under penalty of perjury, that they haven’t done so.


According to the experts, Musk’s citizenship in the United States may be based on false attestations on government forms. This is what’s known as a “crime,” and could mean that Musk’s residency here is built on loose sand. Ironic for a man so convinced that any undocumented person is a threat. But, then again, maybe his concerns go beyond documents. Maybe he’s more concerned about other factors, like securing a future for white children.