“I tell ya, it’s no fun being an illegal alien,” a man reflecting on a depth of personal experience in the matter, Phil Collins, once sang in a 40-year-old song with a video so racist in retrospect, someone should publicly apologize. Someone who seemed to have fun as an “illegal immigrant” was supervillain-in-training and new Trump surrogate Elon Musk.
As Musk hits the campaign trail touting an adjudicated rapist for President and is even offering $100 to Pennsylvania voters to sign a pro-Trimp petition. While the effort is questionable from an election law standpoint, there is no obligation for any Pennsylvania voter who signs the petition, other than admitting you got $100 from Musk to use your name on some non-binding petition, although always read the fine print and don’t take anything you read on this site as legal advice. Ever. The only thing we’re good at is tracking crime in The Villages.
Musk, however, isn’t too good at recalling his post-college immigration status. As CNN reports, during a 2013 interview posted online, Musk’s brother Kimbal described their status in 1995, after Elon dropped out of Stanford’s graduate program as “illegal immigrant,” while his brother called it “a grey area.” Issues presumably arose because Elon had stayed past the legality of his student visa since he dropped out of college and Kimbal came into the US from South Africa via a student visa at a Canadian university or on a standard tourist visa; at some point, both had become Canadian citizens. It’s unclear when either Musk became a legal resident of the United States; Elon became a US citizen in 2002 and Kimbal added an American passport in 2004.