Elon Musk was an illegal migrant worker who abused his student visa when he founded his first company

Elon Musk He worked illegally on a student visa and faced concerns he would be “deported” when he began his life in the United States, an explosive report revealed Saturday.

The South African-born immigrant billionaire also admitted in an email that he “had no legal right to remain in the country” when he abandoned his studies and founded a company that he later sold for more than $300 million. Washington Post reported. His brother was also here illegally, committing what one expert called “entry fraud.”

The revelation comes after Musk, the CEO of Tesla, X, SpaceX and Starlink went out of his way to support donald trump and repeatedly accused Democrats of trying to flood the country with immigrants crossing the border illegally, a conspiracy theory that has become dominant in the Republican Party. Bloomberg called him “X’s biggest anti-immigrant conspiracy promoter.”

His ally Trump is advocating mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. The former president has also ranted about “chain migration.”

But the mail Detailed reporting on 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. The investors were so concerned that he might be “deported” that they sought advice from an immigration attorney.

Musk was born in South Africa and, at age 18, obtained Canadian citizenship through his Canadian-born mother, Maye. He first studied in Canada and then moved to the University of Pennsylvania, which granted 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 their holders the right to work part-time to support their studies.

But The mail revealed that Musk never enrolled, which would have invalidated his student visa. Instead, he worked on his startup. Leaving education to work, even if technically unpaid, is clearly illegal, Leon Fresco, a former Justice Department immigration attorney, told the newspaper.

“If you do anything that helps facilitate revenue creation, like designing code or trying to make sales to promote 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 denied entry at an airport on the grounds that he was working illegally in the United States while trying to return from visiting his mother in Canada. He got a friend to drive him across the border and lied that they were going to see the David Letterman show so they could do what they wanted. he has described in an interview with journalist Graham Bensinger as a critical meeting with investors.

“That’s entry fraud,” said Ira Kurzban, former president and general counsel of American Immigration Lawyers. The mail. “That would make him inadmissible and permanently barred from the United States,” he said, unless sanctions were lifted. Additionally, hiring someone without the legal right to work in the US is a federal crime.

The Musks’ illegal status so worried one investor, Mohr Davidow Ventures, that when it invested $3 million in the company in 1996, the deal included a clause giving the brothers and a third party 45 days to obtain the legal situation.

Derek Proudian, who was on Zip2’s board of directors and later became CEO, said The mail The investor sentiment was, “We don’t want our founder deported.” He added: “Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a business in the United States.”

Another investor told the newspaper anonymously: “Perhaps naively we never examined whether he was a legal citizen.”

The Post reported that the lawyer used by the company told both men not to tell the whole truth about their “leadership” roles and to delete their resumes of American addresses.

Zip2 was sold to Compaq in 1999 for $305 million, with Musk getting $22 million. The company set him on a path that led him to become the CEO of PayPal, which in turn led him to get involved in Tesla and found SpaceX. It is currently worth $274 billion. according Forbes. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002. False statements about your previous immigration status on a citizenship application are illegal and may be grounds for revocation. It is unknown if Musk made any false statements.

In 2005, in an email to Tesla’s co-founders that was filed in a California court, Musk wrote of his trip to Stanford: “I didn’t really care much about the degree, but I didn’t have money for a lab or law school.” legal to stay in the country, so it seemed like a good way to solve both problems.”

In 2013, the Musk brothers appeared on a panel at the Miliken Institute conference where Kimball said they had been “illegal immigrants,” and Musk was quick to say it was “a gray area.”

The Beast has asked Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, for comment. The mail He said he, Musk and the manager of Musk’s family office had not responded to his request for comment.