Elon-gate: Musk laughs off expose on his illegal status at start of storied career

TOI Correspondent from Washington: Tesla and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk is laughing off reports that he began his tech career illegally in the US after dropping out of college, even as he rails against illegal immigration , saying "it is literally easier for a serial killer to get into America than a Nobel Prize winner."

A deep dive by the US media this week into Musk's self-confessed sketchy immigration status that confirmed an illegal start to his career was picked up by President Joe Biden , who told a campaign event in Pittsburgh that wealthiest man in the world was an illegal worker after dropping out of college.

“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’s talking about all these ‘illegals’ coming our way,” Biden said.

"So NOW he cares about illegals," Musk responded on X, with two laughter emojis, while not confirming or denying the reports.

Separately, while campaigning for Trump in Pennsylvania, Musk called for "common sense immigration...quick & easy legal immigration for honest, hardworking, talented people," saying, "It is easier to get into this country as a murderer than a Nobel Laureate." He wanted the responsibility for streamlining legal immigration management to be given to a competent company, "as the bureaucracy is utterly broken."

According to a Washington Post investigation, Musk arrived in the US to attend grad school at Stanford in 1995 but did not enroll in the program he was accepted to. Instead he began a venture-backed startup called Zip2 with his brother Kimball, eventually selling the company for about $ 300 million in 1999.

The paper cited investors and the funding agreement for Zips 2 that stated that the Musk brothers and an associate had 45 days to obtain legal work status. Otherwise, the VC firm could reclaim its investment. “Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S... We don’t want our founder being deported,” it quoted a then board member as saying.

It is not unusual for foreign students to fall "out of status" in course of their stay in the US, particularly as they transition into the work force. But strictly speaking, they cannot found companies or generate revenue or profit without legal status.

Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal have joked about their illegal status at the beginning of their career in interviews in the past, starting with their Zip2 adventure.

“In fact, when they did fund us, they realized that we were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said in the 2013 interview.

“Well...” Elon said.

“Yes, we were,” Kimbal said.

“I’d say it was a gray area,” Elon replied, to audience laughter.

“We were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said flatly.

Musk has now adopted a hardline anti-illegal immigration stance and frequently accuses Kamala Harris of allowing illegal immigrants into the US for political ends -- "importing voters" as he puts it. Trump himself has said several times that he is all for legal immigration, particularly for well-qualified individuals, once going so far as saying he wants foreign nationals who graduate from US colleges to ‘automatically’ receive green cards.

Incidentally, Harris' parents Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan too arrived in the US as foreign graduate students in 1959.