Did Elon Musk Violate America’s Immigration Laws? Here’s What We Know.

There’s no doubt that billionaire Elon Musk has had an outsize impact on the U.S. and the world since establishing himself as an unconventional entrepreneur. Whether that influence has been positive or negative, of course, is a matter that is still up for debate.

But this week, new details have surfaced about the circumstances of his early career … specifically whether he worked in the U.S. illegally after dropping out of Stanford University.

A brief recap

Musk was born in South Africa and obtained Canadian citizenship when he was 18. After acquiring a student visa allowing him to attend college in the U.S., he was accepted to but never enrolled in Stanford, opting instead to launch his first company, Zip2.

Former Justice Department immigration attorney Leon Fresco said this put Musk in a perilous predicament.

“If you do anything that helps to facilitate revenue creation, such as design code or try to make sales in furtherance of revenue creation, then you’re in trouble,” he said.

That caused significant trepidation among potential investors. One wouldn’t contribute to the project until a clause was added to relevant legal documents guaranteeing that both Musk and his brother, Kimbal, would confirm that they were in the country legally.

Making it work

Although Musk’s initial entrepreneurial efforts in the U.S. were shrouded in controversy, it didn’t prevent him from achieving meteoric success since then. He ended up selling Zip2 to Compaq in 1999, making a cool $22 million off of the deal.

From there, he became the CEO of PayPal and eventually became the face of companies like Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter (which he renamed X).

But throughout it all, his immigrant status — an issue he referred to in 2013 as “a gray area” — has been hanging over his head.

Chris Agee October 28th, 2024

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