Billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been very vocal about his views on “open borders”, often criticising US Presidential candidate Kamala Harris and other Democrats of “importing voters”. However, new reports obtained by The Washington Post reveal that South African-born Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States as he launched his entrepreneurial career. Elon Musk’s story of migrating to the US from Africa along with brother Kimbal is one he tells with utmost conviction. What he doesn't mention is how he stayed in America illegally to build his $300 million company ‘Zip2’, which would become “Musk’s steppingstone to Tesla and the other ventures that have made him the world’s wealthiest person — and arguably America’s most successful immigrant,” reveals the Washington Post. One of the biggest Donald Trump supporters for the upcoming US Presidential elections, Musk, who himself went against the law to work in America on a student Visa, has been vouching for the Republican nominee’s claim of “open borders” and undocumented immigrants destroying America, the report stated. “Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the US,” said Derek Proudian, a former Zip2 board member and later chief executive. The investors didn't want to take the risk as well, “We don’t want our founder being deported,” they said, according to the report. In fact, when venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures financed $3 million for Musk’s company in 1996, the agreement gave Musk brothers and their associate 45 days to obtain legal work status. Otherwise, the investment would be taken back. Never publicly acknowledged by Musk, he, in 2013, casually talked about being in a “grey area” early in his career. “I was legally there, but I was meant to be doing student work,” he said in a 2020 podcast. “I was allowed to do work sort of supporting whatever.” In 2005, Musk, in a late-night email to Tesla co-founders Martin Eberhard and JB Straubel, had said that he did not have authorisation to be in the United States when he founded Zip2 and had also applied to Stanford so he could remain in the United States legally. The mail also became evidence in a long-standing California defamation lawsuit. “Actually, I didn’t really care much for the degree, but I had no money for a lab and no legal right to stay in the country, so that seemed like a good way to solve both issues,” Musk wrote in the email, according to The Washington Post. “Then the internet came along, which seemed like a much surer bet.” After ditching Stanford, Zip2, originally called Global Link Information Network, came to being in August or September 1995. In a May 2009 deposition, he recalled declining his acceptance to the university two days before his classes began. On X, Musk has reiterated the anti-immigrant rhetoric. At a time when immigration has become the peg for right-wing groups in first world countries, Elon Musk, blurring his past, writes on X, “The legal immigration process in America needs to be greatly streamlined and expanded, while illegal should be shut down. “If someone is talented, hard-working and honest, they are an asset to the country, “ he adds. Ira Kurzban, an immigration law expert, told the Post “If you tell them you worked illegally in the US, it’s highly unlikely you’d get approved.” Unlike his brother, Kimbal Musk has repeatedly acknowledged working in the United States without legal status — describing his experience as evidence of a dysfunctional US system that blocks talented foreigners. “We were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said bluntly at an interview. A 2023 biography by Walter Isaacson asserted that investors at Mohr Davidow Ventures were the ones to secure visas for the Musk brothers. Immigration attorney Jocelyne Lew had advised the men to downplay their leadership roles within the company and scrub any proof of their US addresses. “I tried to get a visa, but there’s just no visa you can get to do a start-up,” Kimbal said in a 2021 interview. “I was definitely illegal, " The Post quoted Kimbal.
