Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States, according to the investigation – DW – 10/27/2024

Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX and Tesla, in an investigation revealed on Saturday (10/26/2024).

This revelation is relevant as Musk has become one of the largest donors and supporters of former Republican President and current candidate Donald Trump, supporting his rhetoric against illegal immigration.

In recent months, Musk has amplified Trump’s false theories about illegal immigrants, accusing them of destroying the country, and spread those views among his more than 200 million followers on X, a platform he acquired in 2022 and renamed to X, instead of Twitter.

According to the Washington Post, Musk did not have the legal right to work while building Zip2, a company he sold for about $300 million in 1999, which was his springboard to Tesla and other companies that made him the richest person in the world. . world.

He came for a graduate degree but never got in

Musk came to Palo Alto in 1995 to pursue a graduate program at Stanford University, but never enrolled, devoting himself instead to his business ventures.

This, according to legal experts consulted by the newspaper, left him without a legal basis to remain in the country, because by not attending university, he would have had to leave the United States under the immigration laws of the time. In any case, he would not have been allowed to work.

As Leon Fresco, a former Justice Department lawyer, told The Washington Post, foreign students who arrive in the United States on a student visa cannot abandon their studies to start a company, even if they do not receive immediate payments at the time.

Musk has never publicly acknowledged operating without legal status. In a 2013 interview, he joked that he was in a “gray area” early in his career, and in 2020, he said he was on a “student work visa” after leaving Stanford.

“I was there legally, but I was supposed to be doing study-related work,” Musk said in a 2020 podcast.

Neither Musk, his lawyer Alex Spiro, nor the head of Musk’s family office responded to The Washington Post’s requests to respond to these revelations.

JC (EFE, Reuters)