Member-only story
Elon Musk & Immigration Exceptions for Me but Not for Thee
The not so “gray area” issue of Elon Musk’s dropping out of college to work in the United States
In a recently surfaced 2013 interview clip with Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal, his brother says—twice—that they were “illegal immigrants” working in the United States. When Elon interrupts him, Kimbal quite emphatically repeats “yes, we were” twice over his protestations, too.
As has been reported previously, Elon Musk interrupts his brother here because he wants what he did to be considered a “legal grey area.” That’s the sort of nuanced distinction he and Trump — and MAGA in general — certainly have not been willing to give many, many other undocumented immigrants.
I’ve been through this situation myself: If Elon Musk wasn’t in school and he was working, he was doing so illegally. Unless it was between semesters. But you can’t drop out and work. You have to leave the country. Musk arrived at Stanford University in 1995 but never even enrolled in classes. He dropped out two days later to start Zip2 Corp with his brother and Greg Kouri.
I completed a Master’s degree in Education and had to leave the United States in 1995—the exact same year Musk dropped out of Stanford — because, although I had applied for a green card around 1990 and was told it would take about two years to process, it still hadn’t come through. It ended up taking about six years to do so. I explored every other option I could to stay here, including applying to and being accepted into studying for a second Master’s degree at multiple institutions. I decided I was in enough debt already, however, and I had no other legal means of support whatsoever, so I decided not to pursue a second Master’s. That meant I was required by law to leave the United States. So, after earning two degrees in a row here—for good part in order to stay here legally—I left the United States after graduating and taught English in Pusan, Korea. I kept the letter of the law. Musk did…
