• Elon Musk worked illegally in the US while launching Zip2, according to former associates and documents.
• Musk’s immigration status conflicts with his anti-immigrant rhetoric and support for Donald Trump’s campaign.
• Musk and his brother Kimbal eventually obtained work visas, but faced initial scrutiny for their status.

Long before he became one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors and campaign surrogates, South African-born Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States as he launched his entrepreneurial career after ditching a graduate studies programme in California, according to former business associates, court records and company documents obtained by the Washington Post.

Musk in recent months has amplified the Republican presidential candidate’s claims that “open borders” and undocumented immigrants are destroying America, broadcasting those views to more than 200 million followers on the site formerly known as Twitter, which Musk bought in 2022 and later renamed X.

What Musk has not publicly disclosed is that he did not have the legal right to work while building the company that became Zip2, which sold for about US$300 million ($500m) in 1999. It was Musk’s stepping stone to Tesla and the other ventures that have made him the world’s wealthiest person – and arguably America’s most successful immigrant.

Musk and his brother, Kimbal, have often described their immigrant journey in romantic terms, as a time of personal austerity, undeterred ambition, and a willingness to flout conventions.

Musk arrived in Palo Alto in 1995 for a graduate degree programme at Stanford University but never enrolled in courses, working instead on his start-up.

Leaving school left Musk without a legal basis to remain in the US, according to legal experts.

Foreign students cannot drop out of school to build a company, even if they are not immediately getting paid, said Leon Fresco, a former Justice Department immigration litigator.

Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk at a town hall event hosted by America PAC in support of former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Oaks, Pennsylvania. Photo / AFP

“If you do anything that helps to facilitate revenue creation, such as design code or try to make sales in furtherance of revenue creation, then you’re in trouble,” Fresco said.

Musk’s freewheeling business approach soon conflicted with Zip2′s hopes of becoming a public company or entering a high-profile merger, which would have subjected it to scrutiny by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, according to former associates.

When the venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures poured US$3m into Musk’s company in 1996, the funding agreement – a copy of which was obtained by the Post – stated that the Musk brothers and an associate had 45 days to obtain legal work status. Otherwise, the firm could reclaim its investment.

“Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the US,” said Derek Proudian, a Zip2 board member at the time who later became chief executive. Investors agreed, Proudian said: “We don’t want our founder being deported”.

Another large shareholder at the time, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said a minor problem drew additional attention to the Musk brothers’ unresolved immigration issues. Musk told co-workers he was in the country on a student visa, according to six former associates and Zip2 shareholders.

“We want to take care of this long before there’s anything that could screw up” the company’s path to an initial public offering, Proudian recalled.

In Elon Musk’s public retelling of his immigration story, he has never acknowledged having worked without proper legal status. In 2013, he joked about being in a “grey area” early in his career. And in 2020, Musk said he had a “student-work visa” after deferring his studies at Stanford.

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

Musk, his lawyer Alex Spiro and the manager of Musk’s family office did not respond to emailed requests for comment. US immigration records generally are not open to the public, making it difficult to independently confirm a person’s legal status.

In 2005, Musk acknowledged in a late-night email that he did not have authorisation to be in the US when he founded Zip2. The email, from Musk to Tesla co-founders Martin Eberhard and JB Straubel, was submitted as evidence in a long-since-closed California defamation lawsuit and said he applied to Stanford so he could remain in the US legally.

“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 wrote. “Then the internet came along, which seemed like a much surer bet.”

Elon Musk speaks at the Prostate Cancer Foundation annual Hamptons Gala at Parrish Art Museum. Photo / Getty Images

Musk never enrolled at Stanford. In a May 2009 deposition, he said he called the department chair two days after the start of the semester to say he wasn’t going to attend. In the same deposition, he said he began working at Zip2 – originally called Global Link Information Network – in August or September 1995.

Upon not enrolling, Musk would have had to leave the country, according to legal experts and immigration laws at the time. He would not have been allowed to work.

While overstaying a student visa is somewhat common and officials have at times turned a blind eye to it, it remains illegal.

The revelation that Musk lacked the legal right to work in the US stands at odds with his recent focus on undocumented immigrants and US border security, among the issues that have led him to spend more than US$100m helping Trump return to the White House. If Trump wins on November 5, both men have said Musk could have a high-profile role in his administration.

Musk boosts anti-immigrant rhetoric on X

On X, Musk has become an avid booster of anti-immigrant rhetoric, falsely accusing Vice-President Kamala Harris and other Democrats of “importing voters”. Undocumented immigrants are legally barred from voting in state and federal elections. In February, he wrote that “illegals in America can get … insurance, driver’s licences”.

Musk would have been required to have both to drive a vehicle, which associates attested he frequently did during the time he lacked a legal work permit.

US immigration regulations for foreign students were more lax in the 1990s, before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks prompted an overhaul, according to immigration law experts.

Musk, who obtained Canadian citizenship through his mother, would not have needed a visa from the State Department to study at a US university. He could simply show US university enrolment documents to US border officers and enter the US with student status, legal experts said.

Foreign students enrolled in US degree programmes may be authorised to work part-time and for limited periods to complete their degree requirements. Adam Cohen, author of The Academic Immigration Handbook and a lawyer who specialises in employment visas, said Musk could have obtained work authorisation as a student, but that would have required him to be engaged in a full course of study at Stanford.

Otherwise, “that would have been a violation”, Cohen said. If he didn’t go to school, “he wasn’t maintaining his status”.

Ira Kurzban, an immigration law expert and the author of a legal sourcebook used widely by lawyers and judges, agreed.

Kurzban said the brothers’ subsequent applications for work visas and to become US permanent residents and naturalised citizens would have asked whether they worked in the US without authorisation. “If you tell them you worked illegally in the US, it’s highly unlikely you’d get approved,” Kurzban said.

Kimbal Musk has repeatedly acknowledged working in the US without legal status – describing his experience as evidence of a dysfunctional US system that blocks talented foreigners. In a 2013 onstage interview alongside his brother, he said they were sleeping in the office and showering at the YMCA when they joined the dot-com gold rush.

Then investors began offering them huge sums of money and buying them cars, he said, only to find out that the brothers had no legal permission to work in the US.

“In fact, when they did fund us, they realised that we were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said in the 2013 interview.

“Well,” Elon said.

“Yes, we were,” Kimbal said.

“I’d say it was a grey area,” Elon replied, to audience laughter.

“We were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said flatly.

Kimbal has also said he misled US federal agents to re-enter the US for a crucial investor meeting after visiting his mother in Canada. When US officers searching his luggage at the airport discovered his business cards and California address, they realised he was travelling for work – without authorisation.

After they turned him away, he said, he enlisted a friend to drive him over the border, telling officers they were headed to see David Letterman’s show. Officers waved them through and Kimbal made it to the meeting.

“That’s fraud on entry,” said Kurzban, the immigration expert. “That would make him inadmissible and permanently barred from the US,” he said, unless the penalties were waived.

Kimbal Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Elon Musk says he’s ‘extremely pro-immigrant, being one myself’

Last month, Elon Musk called himself “extremely pro-immigrant, being one myself. However, just as when hiring for a company, we should confirm that anyone allowed into the country is talented, hardworking, and ethical”.

But Musk appeared to have benefited from his backers’ initial inattention to his own status, according to former business associates.

“Perhaps naively we never examined whether he was a legal citizen,” said one key investor in Musk’s first company, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue. “He had a burning desire to be successful. We were investing in him … We felt that he was really driven.”

Musk’s fortune has its roots in this period, which fuelled his rise in Silicon Valley and provided seed funding for later ventures, including X.com, a predecessor to PayPal. (Musk later revived the name when he bought Twitter.)

Musk was chief executive of PayPal until September 2000, when board members ousted him. Two years later, eBay acquired PayPal, earning Musk roughly US$176m, which he used to make later bets on Tesla and SpaceX.

A 2023 authorised biography by Walter Isaacson asserted that the Musks had needed visas and investors at Mohr Davidow Ventures lined them up with a lawyer to secure them, but it included few further details. Biographer Ashlee Vance also reported that the investment firm got the brothers visas. Neither reported that Musk had been working without authorisation.

Mohr Davidow Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.

Documents obtained by the Post show that Zip2′s executives met immigration lawyer Jocelyne Lew on February 21, 1996, to discuss potential visa pathways for the Musk brothers and another Canadian co-founder.

Lew advised the men to downplay their leadership roles with the company and scrub their CVs of US addresses that might suggest they were already living and working in the US, the documents show.

Lew encouraged Musk to seek another student visa from the University of Pennsylvania, where he had studied as an undergraduate, the documents show. She also directed him to obtain passport-size photos that would allow him to apply to the US “visa lottery”, according to the files.

Lew did not respond to requests for comment.

Proudian said the board was worried that the founders’ lack of legal immigration status would have to be disclosed in an SEC filing if the company were to go public. He recalled the Musks’ work authorisations coming through around 1997.

A person who joined Zip2′s human resources department in 1997 remembers processing work visas for the Musks and other family members under a category available to Canadians under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

Legal experts said Elon Musk also might have violated the law by persuading his brother to run the company. A 1986 federal law made it a crime to knowingly hire someone who does not have work authorisation. Musk said in 2003 and 2009 that he “convinced” Kimbal to come from Canada to work for his company.

Records filed with the California secretary of state show Elon Musk was the registered agent for Global Link Information Network when it incorporated in November 1995. On February 26, 1996, the company listed Kimbal as president and chief executive and Elon as secretary.

“I tried to get a visa, but there’s just no visa you can get to do a start-up,” Kimbal said in a 2021 interview. “I was definitely illegal.”