The Washington Post wrote that investors in Musk’s first company worried about their “‘founder being deported’ and gave him a deadline for obtaining a work visa.”
Zip2 sold for about $300 million in 1999, a windfall that enabled Elon Musk to later become an early investor in and chairman of Tesla, and to start his capital-intensive aerospace venture SpaceX, which is now a major U.S. defense contractor.
Those businesses have propelled Musk to become the world’s wealthiest person on paper. According to Forbes, the Tesla CEO’s net worth stands at around $274 billion today.
In late 2022, Musk used that considerable wealth to acquire the social network Twitter in a $44 billion buyout.
On the platform, since rebranded X, Musk has repeatedly claimed in posts seen by his massive online fan base that “open borders” and undocumented immigrants are somehow harming the United States.
He also has shared the false claim that noncitizens are systematically voting in U.S. elections, a conspiracy theory floated by conservative groups to lay the legal groundwork to contest the election results if the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, wins the presidency.
In the U.S., it’s already a federal crime and a crime under every state’s laws for noncitizens to register or vote in federal elections.
According to studies compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice, “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. The same is true for mail ballots, which are secure and essential to holding a safe election amid the coronavirus pandemic.”
