In this March 14, 2019, file photo, Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks before unveiling the Model Y at the company's design studio in Hawthorne, Calif. Tesla says it will relocate its headquarters from Palo Alto, Calif., to Austin, Texas, though the electric car maker will keep expanding its manufacturing capacity in the Golden State. (AP/File)
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Elon Musk, now one of Donald Trump’s key supporters, once worked in the U.S. without legal status, according to former associates, court records, and company documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
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Despite the entrepreneur’s vocal stance against undocumented immigration, Musk did not have authorization to work when founding Zip2 in 1995.
Musk and his brother, Kimbal, initially arrived in the U.S. on student visas, but Elon never enrolled in his Stanford program. Legal experts said that dropping out would have rendered him ineligible to work. “If you do anything that facilitates revenue creation, then you’re in trouble,” said Leon Fresco, a former Justice Department immigration attorney.
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Investors at Mohr Davidow Ventures, which funded Zip2, required the brothers to secure legal work status. “Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.,” said Derek Proudian, a former Zip2 board member.
In a 2020 podcast, Musk described his work status as a “gray area,” and denied working illegally. However, Kimbal Musk has repeatedly acknowledged the brothers’ unauthorized status, calling their experience evidence of a flawed immigration system.
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The revelations of Musk’s early immigration troubles come as he amplifies claims of “open borders” and rails against undocumented immigrants on X, the social media platform he owns.
Read more at The Washington Post.
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