WASHINGTON: The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Elon Musk, a billionaire businessman who was born in South Africa, worked illegally in the United States for a brief time in the 1990s while building a startup company.
On Sunday, Musk denied the report, claiming that he was permitted to legally work in the United States during that time. On his social media platform X, he stated, “I was on a J-1 visa that transitioned to an H1-B.” While the H1-B visa is for temporary employment, the J-1 Exchange Visitor visa allows foreign students to receive academic training in the United States.
According to the media outlet, Musk arrived in Palo Alto, California, in 1995, with the intention of enrolling at Stanford University for his graduate studies, but he never did so. Instead, according to the publication, he created the software company Zip2, which he sold for approximately $300 million in 1999.
According to two experts in immigration law who were cited by the Post, Musk would have needed to be enrolled in a complete course of study to keep a valid work authorization while he was a student.
The Post cited a quote from Musk in a podcast from 2020: ” Although I was legally present, I was supposed to be working on student work. I was allowed to work in some sort of support capacity. According to two former Musk coworkers, Musk received his US work authorization in or around 1997, according to the Washington Post.
In the US election on November 5, where the former president faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in a race that polls show to be close, Musk has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Trump has portrayed migrants as invaders and criminals for a number of years, and during his presidency from 2017 to 2021, he took stringent measures to restrict both legal and illegal migration. If he is re-elected, he is promising the largest deportation campaign in US history.
