Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States at the beginning of his career, according to ‘The Washington Post’

Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, Tesla and X, worked illegally in the United States at the beginning of his business career after dropping out of a graduate school program in California, according to former associates, court documents and business records obtained by Washington Post.

The revelation is relevant, since Musk has become one of the largest donors and supporters of former Republican president and current candidate Donald Trumpsupporting his rhetoric against irregular immigration.

In recent months, Musk has echoed Trump’s false theories about undocumented migrantsaccusing them of destroying the country and spreading those opinions among his more than 200 million followers on X, a platform that he acquired in 2022 and renamed to be called X, instead of Twitter.

According to The Washington Postt, Musk did not have the legal right to work while building Zip2, the company he sold for about $300 million in 1999, and which was his springboard to Tesla and other companies that have made him the richest person in the world.

Musk came to Palo Alto in 1995 to attend a graduate program at Stanford University.but never enrolled, dedicating himself instead to his business ventures.

This, according to legal experts consulted by the Post, left him without a legal basis to remain in the country, since by not enrolling in college, he would have had to leave the United States under the immigration laws of the time. In any case, he would not have been allowed to work.

As indicated to Washington Post Fresh Lionformer Department of Justice attorney, foreign students who come to the United States on a student visa cannot abandon their studies to found a company, even if they are not receiving immediate payments at the time.

Musk has never publicly acknowledged working without legal status. In a 2013 interview, he joked that he was in a “gray area” early in his career. and, in 2020, he stated that he had a “student work visa” after leaving his studies at Stanford.

“I was legally there, but I was supposed to do study-related work,” Musk stated in a podcast in 2020.

Neither Musk nor his lawyer Alex Spironor the head of Musk’s family office responded to requests for comment. Washington Post to obtain a response to these revelations.