Musk: Illegal immigrant
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https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/26/biden-elon-musk-illegal-worker-began-career.html
President Joe Biden called out Tesla
and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, now a Republican megadonor and Trump campaign surrogate, for hypocrisy on immigration on Saturday, saying Musk launched his long career in the U.S. as an “illegal worker” before becoming the world’s wealthiest man.The president made these remarks at a campaign event to support Democrats that took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Labeling Musk as former President Donald Trump’s wealthy new “ally,” Biden said, “That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here when he was here,” referring to Musk.
“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 added.
Musk had arrived in the U.S. with the stated intention of attending grad school at Stanford in the mid-90s. He did not enroll in the program to which he said he was accepted and instead began to build a venture-backed startup called Zip2 with his brother.
The Washington Post wrote that investors in Musk’s first company worried about their ”‘founder being deported’ and gave him a deadline for obtaining a work visa.”
Zip2 sold for about $300 million in 1999, a windfall that enabled Elon Musk to later become an early investor in and chairman of Tesla, and to start his capital-intensive aerospace venture SpaceX, which is now a major U.S. defense contractor.
Musk replies:
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Stupid. You saw Fetterman’s statement. Pennsylvania loves Musk.
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I assume the wapo investigative journalism is behind a paywall. I wonder if technically it’s true that musk was temporarily illegal, or whether there are built in grace periods or grandfathering. I am aware that overstaying a visa or improperly using a visa needs to be disclosed when applying for a new one. Yet Musk’s transition went through.