Milon Musk, a billionaire and CEO of Tesla, has a very loud voice of his own views on “border opening,” and the US President Camara Harris and other Democrats. He has often criticized the members’ “importation of voters”.
However, a new report obtained by The Washington Post reveals that South African-born Elon Musk was working illegally in the United States as he began his entrepreneurial career.
The story of how Elon Musk immigrated to the United States from Africa with his brother Kimbal is one he tells with the utmost conviction. What he doesn’t mention is how he came to the United States illegally to start his $300 million company, Zip2. The company later became “a stepping stone to Tesla and other ventures that made Mr. Musk the richest man in the world and arguably America’s most successful immigrant,” the Washington Post revealed.
Musk, one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, is also working in the U.S. on a student visa, in violation of the law, and is a Republican advocate of “open borders” and illegal immigration destroying the U.S. He has defended the candidates’ claims. says the report.
Tesla’s CEO ( CEO) and X owner Elon Musk will give a lecture. (Reuters)
“Their immigration status did not allow them to be legally employed to run a company in the United States,” said Derek Proudian, a former Zip2 board member and future CEO. According to the report, investors also did not want to take the risk because they did not want the founders to be deported.
In fact, when venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures loaned Musk’s company $3 million in 1996, the agreement gave the Musk brothers and their colleagues 45 days to obtain legal work status. It was done. Otherwise, you will lose your investment.
Musk has never publicly acknowledged it, but in 2013 he casually said early in his career that he was in a “gray area.” “I was there legally, but I was going to do student work,” he said on a 2020 podcast. “I was given the opportunity to do a job that would support me in any way.”
In 2005, Musk sent a late-night email to Tesla co-founders Martin Eberhard and J.B. Straubel stating that he did not have permission to be in the U.S. at the time of founding Zip2 and that he was leaving Stanford to stay. He said he had also applied to universities. Legally in the US.
The email also became evidence in a long-running defamation lawsuit in California.
“Actually, I wasn’t really interested in the degree, but since I didn’t have the money to buy a lab or the legal right to stay in the country, I thought it was a good way to solve both problems. ” Musk wrote in an email. , according to the Washington Post.
“Then the internet came along and it seemed like a surer bet.”
After abandoning Stanford, Zip2, originally called Global Link Information Network, was founded in August or September of 1995.
In a May 2009 deposition, he recalled declining admission to the university two days before classes began.
Regarding X, Mr. Musk repeated his anti-immigrant rhetoric. At a time when immigration has become a stumbling block for right-wing groups in developed countries, Elon Musk blurts out his past, writing about X: under. “If someone is talented, hardworking and honest, they are an asset to this country,” he added.
Immigration law expert Ira Kurtzban told the Post that “even if you say you were working illegally in the United States, the chances of getting approved are very low.”
Unlike his brother, Kimbal Musk has repeatedly admitted that he worked in the United States without legal status, and that experience has led to a breakdown in the dysfunctional American system that blocks talented foreigners. It states that it is evidence. “We were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said candidly in an interview.
A 2023 biography by Walter Isaacson claimed that investors at Mohr Davidow Ventures secured visas for the Musk brothers. Immigration lawyer Jocelyn Lu had advised the men to downplay their leadership roles within the company and hide all evidence of their U.S. addresses.
“I tried to get a visa, but there’s no visa you can get to do a startup,” Kimbal said in a 2021 interview. “I was definitely illegal,” the Post quoted Kimbal as saying.
