For close to two years, the Heritage Foundation has been suing the Department of Homeland Security to get their hands on Prince Harry’s visa application. Heritage claims they need to see Harry’s visa documents to determine if Harry “lied” about drug use, and if he lied, Heritage would then lead the charge to deport Harry. Lying on a visa application is a really serious thing and it could absolutely lead to deportation. So it’s curious that Heritage doesn’t have that same energy for a South African MAGA douche who pals around with Vladimir Putin.
Elon Musk could have his United States citizenship revoked and be exposed to criminal prosecution if he lied to the government as part of the immigration process, according to legal experts.
Musk, who was born and raised in South Africa and later emigrated to Canada before eventually settling in the US and becoming a citizen, has spent more than $100 million to support Donald Trump and his nativist presidential campaign, and has personally demonized immigrants. A recent Bloomberg analysis found, for example, that Musk has posted around 1,300 times on X this year about immigration and voter fraud. Many of those posts promote the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which falsely holds that Democrats seek to replace white voters with unauthorized immigrants whose votes they control, and depicts immigrants as dangerous lawbreakers.
Earlier this week, though, The Washington Post reported that Musk was himself an immigrant who had apparently broken the law. In the 1990s, he worked illegally in the United States, according to the Post, which cited “former business associates, court records and company documents.” 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 startup that would eventually be known as Zip2. (Stanford did not reply to requests for comment.) In 1996, the Post reported, investors made a funding agreement contingent on Musk and his brother Kimbal—who has stated that the brothers were “illegal immigrants”—obtaining authorization to work in the US within 45 days. “Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the US,” Zip2 board member Derek Proudian told the Post.
Musk denies that he ever worked illegally in the US. (His lawyer, Alex Spiro, and a spokesperson for X, which he owns, did not reply to requests for comment.) He claims that in 1995, as a student, he was in the US on a J-1 visa, which then “transitioned” to an H1-B visa. As the Post reported, though, in a 2005 email that was entered into evidence in a since-closed defamation lawsuit in California, he wrote that he had applied to Stanford because he otherwise had “no legal right to stay in the country.” Musk then reportedly didn’t enroll at Stanford, instead working on the project that would become Zip2.
Someone present in the US 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, according to experts WIRED consulted. (He did ultimately receive work authorization in 1997.)
Overstaying a student visa was, and to a much lesser extent still is, relatively common. Working without authorization and lying about it during the immigration process would be, however, a black-letter violation of US law carrying significant penalties, albeit one enforced fairly rarely, say experts.
Several weeks ago, Musk said that if Donald Trump doesn’t win, he (Musk) will get thrown in jail. There’s an abundance of evidence of Musk’s criminality, from the Putin collusion to his Starlink bullsh-t harming Ukraine, to his election interference on behalf of Trump. But what if his citizenship was all based on lies? LMAO. Deport him.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Getty.