Billionaire Elon Musk, who has become a staunch opponent of illegal immigration as a top surrogate for Donald Trump, and boosted misleading claims about the issue throughout the 2024 election cycle, launched his career in Silicon Valley working illegally, according to The Washington Post.
Musk has echoed the immigration stances held by former President Donald Trump. (Photo by Anna … [+]
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Key Facts
The Post, citing business associates, court records and company documents, found Musk did not have the legal right to work in the U.S. while creating Zip2—a business directory software company that sold for about $300 million 25 years ago.
Musk, who was born in Pretoria, South Africa, dropped out of a Stanford University graduate program in 1995 as a foreign student to instead work on his start-up.
Musk’s immigration status put the company at risk of not receiving funding, according to the Post, which cited a funding agreement between Zip2 and Mohr Davidow Ventures that Musk, his brother Kimbal and an associate, had 45 days to secure legal work status or face losing out on the $3 million investment.
Derek Proudian, a Zip2 board member who later became the company’s chief executive, told the Post that Zip2 investors did not want its founder deported, and that the Musk brothers’ “immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.”
Musk acknowledged his immigration status when he founded Zip2 in a 2005 email to Tesla co-founders Martin Eberhard and JB Straubel revealed in a lawsuit, where he explained he applied to Stanford to stay in the U.S. legally, according to the Post.
Representatives at X and Alex Spiro, one of Musk’s attorneys, did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment, and Musk has yet to respond to the story on X.
Forbes Valuation
Musk is now worth an estimated $274.7 billion, making him the world’s wealthiest person.
Big Number
1,300. That is how many times Musk has posted about immigration and voter fraud this year, 330 posts of which were made in the past two months, according to Bloomberg Technology, which noted the topics have become Musk’s most frequent and most engaged-with posts.
Crucial Quote
“When they did fund us, they realized that we were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said in a 2013 panel discussion alongside his brother. Elon attempted to interject before Kimbal again insisted the two brothers were immigrants during the early days of Zip2. Elon replied, “I’d say it was a gray area.”
Tangent
Musk has said he is “extremely pro-immigrant” and advocated for the U.S. to expand its immigration system so that it could “let anyone in… who is hardworking and honest and will be a contributor.”
Key Background
Musk’s spreading of misinformation has flourished on X, where many of his immigration and his voter fraud posts (about 70%) are short replies that have largely boosted or implicitly supported misleading conspiracy theories, according to Bloomberg.The tech billionaire’s increase of immigration and voter fraud posts coincides with the nearing of Election Day and his support and endorsement of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Musk has echoed Trump’s misleading claims that Democrats are trying to provide illegal immigrants with the right to vote, claiming early this year “the Dems will import and legalize enough migrants to ensure a permanent-one party rule that is increasingly socialist (to a confiscatory level) and repressive.” Despite concern around non-citizens voting illegally, studies have found attempts to vote illegally are rare. Musk has also extended his anti-immigration stance to other countries, suggesting last year a German humanitarian group conducting a rescue operation of immigrants in the Mediterranean Sea was violating the sovereignty of Italy, where the rescued immigrants were released.
