Elon Musk accused US President Joe Biden of lying. The politician claims that the businessman started working in the USA in the 1990s, “violating the law”. “I actually had a work permit. Puppet Biden lies”, Musk wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
This is how the entrepreneur reacted to the words of the American president, who, in one of his public appearances after information about Musk's past appeared, said that he came to the United States with a student visa, but instead worked in this way “broke the law”. The president also rebuked the entrepreneur for criticizing the administration for the situation with the influx of migrants. “He just started talking about illegal immigrants,” Musk replied.
The Washington Post previously reported that Musk began his career in the United States without legal status. According to the publication, the Tesla founder, who opposes illegal immigration, was in the US illegally on a student visa despite dropping out of school. The South African came to the United States to study at Stanford University, but shortly after the start of the fall 1995 semester, he called his department chair and said he would not be attending classes. The law ordered the would-be businessman to leave the United States, WP explains.
Instead, he overstayed his visa while starting his first company, Zip2 (originally named Global Link Information Network). Because U.S. immigration data is not published, it is difficult to determine when Musk's immigration status changed, the paper noted. However, as the article points out, the company hired a lawyer to get Musk and his brother Kimball visas in 1996 — meaning both he and his brother were in the country illegally for most of the year.