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

Robert Stribley
4 min readDec 29, 2024
Elon and Kimbal Musk standing beside their father’s Rolls Royce — Photo by their father, Errol Musk (Fair Use)

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…

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Robert Stribley
Robert Stribley

Written by Robert Stribley

Writer. Photographer. UXer. Creative Director. Interests: immigration, privacy, human rights, design. UX: Technique. Teach: SVA. Aussie/American. He/him.

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