Elon Musk worked illegally in US after dropping out of school in 1995 – report

Elon Musk briefly worked illegally in the United States after abandoning a graduate study program in California, according to a Washington Post report that contrasts the episode with the South African billionaire's anti-immigration views.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss, who has supported Donald Trump's campaign for a second term in recent weeks while promoting his opposition to the Republican White House nominee's “open borders” on his X social media site, has previously maintained that his student-turned-entrepreneur There was a “legal gray area”.

But the Washington Post reported on Saturday that the world's richest man had almost certainly been working without proper authorization for a period in the US after dropping out of Stanford University in 1995 to work on his first company, Zip2, which was almost sold. $300m after four years.

Legal experts say foreign students cannot drop out of school to start a company even if they don't get paid. The Post also noted that – prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 – regulations for student visas were more lax.

“If you do something that facilitates revenue generation, like design code or try to sell it to generate revenue, you're going to be in trouble,” Leon Fresco, a former US Department of Justice immigration litigator, told the outlet.

But the Post also acknowledged: “While overstaying a student visa is somewhat common and officials sometimes turn a blind eye to it, it is illegal.”

Musk previously said: “I was there legally, but I wanted to do student work. I was allowed to do whatever supported me.”

Musk employs 121,000 people at Tesla, about 13,000 at SpaceX and about 3,000 at X. Scrutiny of his immigration status after dropping out of Stanford came after Trump spoke of his desire for Musk to take on a high-profile role focused on government efficiency. A second Trump administration if voters return him to office at the expense of Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election.

Musk in turn accused the vice president and his fellow Democrats of “importing voters” through illegal and temporary protected status immigration. During the recent Trump campaign, he compared the US-Mexico border to a “zombie apocalypse” – even as he described himself as “very pro-immigrant, one myself”.

Bloomberg News recently published an analysis of more than 53,000 posts sent from Musk's X account, with the entrepreneur's output becoming increasingly political this election year.

“In 2024, immigration and voter fraud were Mask's most frequently posted and engaged policy topics, garnering nearly 10 billion views,” the outlet said. “Posted over 1,300 times about the topic overall, including over 330 posts in the last 2 months alone.”

Bloomberg described Musk — who paid $44 billion in 2022 for X, then Twitter — as the single most important influencer on the platform and reportedly instructed site engineers to push his posts into users' feeds. That makes Musk “the most-read person on the site today,” Bloomberg said.