Elon Musk worked illegally in US at start of his career: report

Elon Musk has a lot to say on social media about immigration, migrant crime and falsehoods about Democrats using illegal immigrants to cast votes. What he hasn’t said publicly, according to The Washington Post, is that Musk, himself an immigrant, worked in the U.S. illegally at the start of his career.

Musk, the world’s richest person, was born in South Africa and left his home country after graduation at 17 to attend college in Canada. According to The Post, he arrived in Palo Alto in 1995 for a graduate degree program at Stanford University, but he never enrolled in classes.

He instead worked on his first start-up, Zip2, which he sold in 1999 for roughly $300 million. Zip2 paved the way for Tesla and the other companies that make Musk the wealthiest person on Earth.

SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk speaks at a town hall with Republican candidate U.S. Senate Dave McCormick at the Roxain Theater on October 20, 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

Legal experts told The Post that Musk’s decision to not attend school means he had no legal basis to remain in the U.S.

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Leon Fresco, a former Justice Department immigration litigator, said foreign students are not allowed to drop out of school to build a company, "even if they are not immediately getting paid."

"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," Fresco told The Post.

Musk, 53, has increasingly used X, the social media site he owns, to amplify unfounded immigration claims, including that Democrats are "importing" migrants into the country to vote and that Haitian migrants in Ohio are killing and eating pets.

According to Bloomberg, Musk posts more about immigration and voter fraud than any other topics on X, where he has more than 200 million followers. 

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In February, Musk, who has poured more than $100 million into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, complained that illegal immigrants can get driver’s licenses and insurance in the U.S. Musk’s associates said he frequently drove during the time when he wasn’t legally in the U.S. – he would have had to have a driver’s license and insurance to do so, The Post pointed out.

Musk’s brother Kimbal has repeatedly acknowledged that he and Elon worked in the U.S. without proper authorization.

Musk, his attorney Alex Spiro and the manager of Musk’s family office did not respond to requests for comment from The Post.