World’s richest man Elon Musk briefly worked illegally in US after quitting…: Report

Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who founded companies like Tesla and SpaceX, reportedly worked illegally in the United States for a short time during the 1990s, according to a report by The Washington Post. The report claims that Musk, who was born in South Africa, arrived in the U.S. in 1995 and initially went to Palo Alto, California, to attend Stanford University. However, instead of enrolling in the graduate program, he decided to focus on building a software company called Zip2.

Zip2, which Musk co-founded, provided city guide software for newspapers and was eventually sold in 1999 for approximately $300 million. During the early years of Zip2, Musk's work status in the U.S. was not fully legal, as stated by two immigration experts cited in The Washington Post report. They explained that, as an international student, Musk would have needed to be enrolled in a full course of study to maintain a valid work authorization. Since he was not taking classes at Stanford, this would have made his work status problematic.

In a 2020 podcast mentioned by The Washington Post, Musk himself commented on the situation, saying that while he was "legally there," his work should have been limited to activities related to his student status. He added, "I was allowed to do work sort of supporting whatever," implying some flexibility in the rules he was operating under at the time.

The report also quoted two of Musk’s former colleagues, who remembered him getting proper U.S. work authorization around 1997, which was a couple of years after he had started working on Zip2.

Elon Musk did not respond to requests for comments from The Washington Post, and his lawyer, Alex Spiro, also did not provide a statement. The news outlet reached out to four of Musk’s companies – SpaceX, Tesla, the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), and The Boring Company – but did not receive any replies.

Interestingly, Musk has shown support for Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate for the upcoming U.S. election on November 5. Trump has been known for his tough stance on immigration and has previously taken measures to curb both legal and illegal migration during his presidency from 2017 to 2021. He has promised stricter immigration policies if he wins re-election.