Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and currently a Republican megadonor and Trump campaign backer, was criticized by President Joe Biden on Saturday for his hypocritical immigration policies, claiming that Musk began his lengthy career in the United States as an “illegal worker” before rising to become the richest man in the world.
At a Democratic campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, the president said these things.
Biden referred to Musk as the wealthy new “ally” of former President Donald Trump, saying, “That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here when he was here.”
“He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. He’s talking about all these ‘illegals’ heading our way,” Biden continued.
Then he attacked Trump and Republicans for not signing legislation to address “the border problem.”
Since his third year as President of the United States, he continued, “we have fewer people crossing the border illegally now — or crossing the border period — than at any time.”
A request for response on Biden’s comments from CNBC was not immediately answered by the Trump team.
Musk recently finished holding a number of “town hall” events in Pennsylvania, another swing state, to persuade people to support Trump and his ideas. By offering $1 million lottery-style prizes to registered voters in swing states who signed a petition published by his pro-Trump organization, America PAC, Musk further energized his following there.
Trump’s new immigration policy proposals include, among other things, ending birthright citizenship, revoking the visas of and deporting foreign students who are pro-Palestinian protestors, and launching the largest deportation operation in American history, according to a Peterson Institute for International Economics analysis.
Following a Washington Post investigation that cites letters, court documents, and several individuals who assisted Musk in obtaining a work visa in 1996 after he had already been employed here without one, Biden made remarks regarding Musk, his Trump affiliation, and his hypocrisy on immigration.
Musk had come to the United States in the mid-1990s with the stated goal of enrolling at Stanford graduate school. Instead of enrolling in the program to which he claimed acceptance, he and his brother started Zip2, a venture-backed firm.
According to the Washington Post, investors in Musk’s initial business were concerned about their “founder being deported” and gave him a deadline to secure a work visa.
Elon Musk was able to launch his capital-intensive aerospace company SpaceX, which is already a significant U.S. defense contractor, and become an early investor and chairman of Tesla thanks to the approximately $300 million that Zip2 sold for in 1999.
On paper, those businesses have made Musk the richest person in the world. Forbes estimates that the current net worth of the Tesla CEO is approximately $274 billion.
Musk utilized that considerable fortune to pay $44 billion to buy the social media platform Twitter in late 2022.
Since changing its name to X, Musk has made several claims on the platform that “open borders” and undocumented immigrants are somehow detrimental to the US in messages that are viewed by his sizable online following.
In order to establish the legal foundation for challenging the election results in the event that Democratic contender and Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency, conservative groups have also spread the untrue conspiracy theory that noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections on a regular basis.
It is already illegal for noncitizens to register to vote or register to vote in federal elections in the United States, as well as illegal under state law.
“Extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent, and many instances of alleged fraud are, in fact, mistakes by voters or administrators,” according to studies collated by the Brennan Centre for Justice. This also applies to mail-in ballots, which are safe and necessary for a secure election in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak.
