‘I love election season’: Elon Musk is playing border patrol, guess he forgot about his own little illegal layover
Hypocrisy: Thy name is Elon Musk. In recent years, the business tycoon has sided with Donald Trump and many of his policies, making himself an enemy of “open borders.”
The hypocrisy stems from the fact that Musk started building his insane fortune while living in the U.S. illegally. Musk moved to the U.S. in 1992 to study at the University of Pennsylvania, earning two degrees: a Bachelor of Arts in physics and a Bachelor of Science in economics. Later, in 1995, Musk was accepted into a graduate program at Stanford University but failed to enroll. It is here that things get murky. According to an article from The Washington Post, based on correspondence and legal records, Musk continued to stay and work in the U.S. illegally having failed to enroll.
Instead of enrolling, Musk started a venture-backed start-up company with his brother called Zip2. According to the article, investors in their start-up were worried that the founder could potentially be deported due to his visa status. In 1999, Zip2 sold for $330 million, a windfall that would allow Musk to become an early investor in Tesla. Legal experts say that foreign students cannot drop out of their studies to start, or work, for a business, even if there is no pay.
The Post cited Leon Fresco, a former US Justice Department immigration litigator, who said, “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.”
How the times have changed
Jump to today, and Musk, who is now worth $274 billion, has been on the campaign trail with his buddy Trump promoting the former president’s opposition to “open borders.” That’s right, a man who has financially benefitted (to a degree like no other) from working here illegally is now making sure that accessing the “American Dream” becomes near impossible for other immigrants.
Immigration has become a popular talking point for Musk on X, the popular social media site that Musk bought in 2022. At the time he declared it would be politically neutral.
During election year, Musk’s posts have become increasingly more political according to Bloomberg News. The article states:
“In 2024, immigration and voter fraud has become Musk’s most frequently posted and engaged with policy topic, garnering about 10bn views. Musk posted more than 1,300 times about the topic overall, with more than 330 posts in the past 2 months alone.”
It would be dangerous to underestimate Musk’s social influence. Bloomberg reported that Musk is the site’s single most influential individual and that he has reportedly ordered site engineers to push his posts out to reach more people. He has made numerous false and unsubstantiated claims accusing the Democrats and Vice-President Kamala Harris of bringing in illegal immigrants to vote for her.
President Biden calls out Musk
The article has led to a renewed interest in Musk’s activities and legal status in the ‘90s. President Joe Biden called out Musk’s hypocrisy saying, “That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here when he was here. He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law.”
He criticized Republicans and Trump for their response to the borders, saying they failed to file legislation that would help fix “the problem with the border.” He also added that border crossings have been substantially down during his presidency. According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, if Trump wins the upcoming election, he plans for the largest deportation in U.S. history. Musk, a former illegal immigrant himself (if the alleged above is correct) would be just fine with that.
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