Musk denies reports that he worked illegally in the U.S. during Zip2 launch

Elon Musk has denied recent reports claiming that he worked illegally when launching his career in the U.S., after the claims were widely reported over the weekend to be contradictory to his recent political statements regarding illegal immigration.

On Saturday, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post claimed in a report that Musk was not legally allowed to work at the time that he was launching Zip2, which would later go on to sell for around $307 million in 1999. Although Musk arrived in the U.S. in 1995 for a graduate program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, he never enrolled in his courses, and shortly thereafter he dropped out and started Zip2 with his brother Kimbal.

In the report, the Post notes that Musk’s dropping out of school would render him without a legal backing to remain in the country, though he has already denied the claims in a post on X.

President Joe Biden later reiterated the claims during a Democratic campaign event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Saturday (via CNBC), to which Musk responded on X.

“I was on a J-1 visa that transitioned to an H1-B,” Musk said in the post in the early hours of Sunday morning. “They know this, as they have all my records. Losing the election is making them desperate.”

The Post report also said that Musk’s former business associates at Zip2 were concerned about his legal status and the risk of his deportation.

According to six former associates and Zip2 shareholders cited in the report, Musk told co-workers at the time that he was in the country on a student visa. Former Zip2 board member, investor, and later CEO Derek Proudian highlighted agreement amongst investors that Elon and Kimbal’s immigration was of concern at the time—especially if the company was aiming to go public.

“Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.,” Proudian said. “We don’t want our founder being deported.”

“We want to take care of this long before there’s anything that could screw up,” Proudian added, alluding to the company’s potential for an initial public offering (IPO).

The report also claims that another large shareholder who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the topics said that another minor problem had drawn attention to the brothers’ immigration issues.

While Elon has never publicly stated that he worked without proper legal status, The Post also said it obtained emails between Musk and other early Tesla executives, in which he did express not having a legal backing to remain in the U.S., though he pointed to Zip2 as a potential solution—potentially corroborating his denial of the claims if he did in fact transition to an H1-B visa before becoming a U.S. citizen in 2002.

“Actually, I didn’t really care much for the degree, but 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 said in a 2005 email to Tesla co-founders Martin Eberhard and JB Straubel obtained by the Post. “Then the internet came along, which seemed like a much surer bet.”

“I was legally there, but I was meant to be doing student work,” Musk also said in a podcast in 2020. “I was allowed to do work sort of supporting whatever.”

The reports and Musk’s denial come as the Tesla and SpaceX head has been posting several times a day on X about illegal immigrants, following his endorsement of Republican candidate Donald Trump in July, and his founding of the America PAC political action committee (PAC) in support of the former President’s campaign.

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