A Washington Post investigation has found solid evidence that Elon Musk did not have the legal right to work in the U.S. when he ditched graduate school and began a start-up company.
Some of The Post’s findings:
Musk arrived in Palo Alto in 1995 for a graduate degree program at Stanford University but never enrolled in courses, working instead on his start-up.
Leaving school left Musk without a legal basis to remain in the United States, according to legal experts.
Foreign students cannot drop out of school to build a company, even if they are not immediately getting paid, said Leon Fresco, a former Justice Department immigration litigator.
The start-up was called Zip2. The Post describes it as “Musk’s steppingstone to Tesla and the other ventures that have made him the world’s wealthiest person.”
And that’s not the only immigration law Musk may have broken. The Post reports, “Legal experts said Elon Musk also might have violated the law by persuading his brother [Kimbal Musk] to come run the company. A 1986 federal law made it a crime to knowingly hire someone who does not have work authorization. Musk said in 2003 and 2009 that he ‘convinced’ Kimbal to come from Canada to work for his company.” Kimbal Musk “has repeatedly acknowledged working in the United States without legal status.”
The Post does not go into the implications of this on Musk’s current status as a naturalized citizen nor on his security clearance. But it quotes esteemed immigration law expert Ira Kurzban saying that the Musk brothers’ “subsequent applications for work visas and to become U.S. permanent residents and naturalized citizens would have asked whether they worked in the United States without authorization. ‘If you tell them you worked illegally in the U.S., it’s highly unlikely you’d get approved,” Kurzban said.’”
According to The Daily Beast, “False statements about past immigration status in a citizenship application are illegal and can be grounds for revocation.”
Yes, it’s another example of how every accusation from MAGA world is a confession. But Musk is far worse than a hypocritical, criminal immigrant. Musk has recently been revealed to be in regular contact with Vladimir Putin. This is not a guy who should be in any White House, much less have a security clearance.
But “anti-immigrant” insurrectionist and phony patriot Donald Trump has said he wants to put Musk in charge of a commission to audit federal spending and regulation. It’s a sanitized description for a role that’s really about finding ways to pay for billionaires’ tax cuts by cutting services for the rest of us.
Musk is a dangerous man who should be booted out of the country, not given access to U.S. secrets nor given any role in U.S. policy.
