Elon Musk’s U.S. citizenship in jeopardy as billionaire's past faces scrutiny: report
Tech billionaire and Donald Trump ally Elon Musk faces the possibility that his United States citizenship could be revoked if authorities discover he lied on immigration forms, according to a new report that said the world’s richest man might have worked in the country without authorization.
Legal experts told the news magazine WIRED in an article published Thursday that Musk, who has been floated as a possible Trump cabinet official and poured more than $100 million in support of the former president, could be exposed to criminal prosecution “if he lied to the government as part of the immigration process.”
The assessment of the predicament Musk could face came after the Washington Post reported earlier this week that Musk “was himself an immigrant who had apparently broken the law," WIRED noted. The Post highlighted that Musk worked illegally in the U.S. in the 1990s, citing sources including “former business associates, court records and company documents."
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“In 1995, according to the Post, Musk was admitted to graduate school at Stanford but didn’t enroll in classes, instead working on an online services start-up that would eventually be known as Zip2,” WIRED notes. The Post also reported that Musk and his brother in 1996 made a funding agreement with investors that was contingent on them “obtaining authorization to work in the US within 45 days.”
Musk denied he worked in the country illegally, according to the magazine. He later received work authorization in 1997.
“Someone present in the U.S. on a student visa who didn’t enroll in courses would have had no right to work at the time and would have had to leave the country, WIRED concluded after consulting experts, but, it noted, the matter could be referred to a U.S. Attorney’s Office if the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service found “solid evidence that Musk broke the law.”
“Prosecutors, who have broad discretion to take up or decline cases, could then proceed, or not, as they saw fit,” the magazine said.