Elon Musk claims student visa permitted him to work in U.S.

Elon Musk denied in a late-night post having worked illegally in the United States, following a Washington Post report that said Musk lacked the legal status to build the startup that made him a millionaire in the 1990s.

“I was in fact allowed to work in the US,” Musk wrote on X, the platform he bought in 2022, in a post at 12:40 a.m. Eastern time Sunday.

Musk’s denial followed remarks from President Joe Biden, who seized on the Post’s reporting Saturday to accuse the man who has allied with former President Donald Trump in the upcoming election of a double standard.

Musk has become a vociferous critic of the administration’s handling of immigration, decrying what he calls “open borders” and warning of the perils of illegal immigration. On his X feed he often laments the flood of “illegals” and baselessly alleges that it is part of a massive voter importation scheme.

“That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be (an) illegal worker here when he was here,” Biden said, according to footage posted of a Saturday campaign event in Pittsburgh. “I’m serious. 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?”

Musk, in his late-night comments on X, wrote that “the Biden puppet is lying.”

He later claimed to have possessed “a J-1 visa that transitioned to an H1-B.”

The J-1 Exchange Visitor visa allows foreign students to obtain academic training in the United States. The H1-B is a visa for temporary employment.

Musk did not say when he transitioned from a student visa to the temporary work visa. Six former business associates and shareholders said Musk claimed he was on a student visa around the time his status became a concern for the company, Zip2.

The Post’s report, based on interviews with former business associates, court records and company documents, said Musk worked illegally after ditching a graduate program in California to launch a start-up that later sold for more than $300 million. A board member of the company, who later became its CEO, said Musk’s status “was not what it should be” in order “to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.”

Upon learning that Musk lacked the legal status he needed, investors scrambled to help him secure a visa over concerns that the matter would have to be disclosed in a securities filing if the company were to go public.

“We don’t want our founder being deported,” said Derek Proudian, the Zip2 board member, who later became chief executive.

The White House and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The terms of an investment deal in the company gave Musk, his brother and an associate 45 days to obtain legal work status. In a 2005 email obtained by the Post, Musk wrote that he had applied to a Stanford University graduate program, which he did not end up attending, so he could stay in the country.

“I had no money for a lab and no legal right to stay in the country, so that seemed like a good way to solve both issues,” Musk wrote.

According to the federal immigration regulations that were in effect in the mid-1990s, foreign students with a J-1 visa were allowed to work only in limited circumstances if they were in “good academic standing” and pursuing a “full course of study.”

Musk did not attend classes at Stanford when he arrived in Palo Alto in fall 1995, working to build his company instead.

“There are work options during studies, while engaged in a full course of study, and also after the completion of studies,” said Adam Cohen, author of “The Academic Immigration Handbook” and an attorney who specializes in employment visas. “But dropping out of school does not allow for work authorization. So there is a quite a gap there.”

The J-1 allows visa holders to work in pursuit of academic training, but only during one’s studies or following the completion of studies, Cohen pointed out. This also requires being in good academic standing and receiving written approval in advance from the school for the duration and type of academic training.