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Musk has been one of the biggest advocates of strict law enforcement of immigration status. But this has drawn some scrutiny to his own status and how he has managed to get US citizenship after coming here on just a student visa... because that would actually be a very hard way to do it.
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Musk was born in South Africa, obtained Canadian citizenship through his mother and came to the US to study at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He became a US citizen a decade later, according to biographies of the billionaire.
He has said in the past that after leaving Penn he had planned to pursue graduate studies at Stanford, but dropped out to work on founding his first company.
That’s significant, experts say, because there are strict rules about the kind of work allowed when someone is in the US on a student visa, and work authorizations tied to student visas generally require someone to be actively studying or for the sponsoring institution to allow the student to get academic or practical training after graduation.
Immigration attorney Greg Siskind, who’s co-authored multiple editions of a guide to J-1 visas, says transitioning from a J-1 visa to an H-1B visa is a possible path. But he says a J-1 visa wouldn’t provide work authorization to someone who dropped out of a degree program. The moment Musk dropped out, he would have lost his status and been unauthorized to work, Siskind says.
“Musk would have needed to be engaged in a full course of study (at least 12 academic hours a semester) in order to qualify for work while being a J-1 student,” Siskind wrote on X.
A Stanford spokeswoman told CNN last month that the university had no record Musk had ever enrolled there, but that he had been accepted into the school’s Materials Science and Engineering graduate program. Asked if Musk ever had a student visa connected with the university, the spokeswoman said she did not know because further documentation was unavailable.
What if Musk’s visa was obtained through the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied as an undergraduate?
The same criteria would apply, Siskind says."
"
Musk was born in South Africa, obtained Canadian citizenship through his mother and came to the US to study at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He became a US citizen a decade later, according to biographies of the billionaire.
He has said in the past that after leaving Penn he had planned to pursue graduate studies at Stanford, but dropped out to work on founding his first company.
That’s significant, experts say, because there are strict rules about the kind of work allowed when someone is in the US on a student visa, and work authorizations tied to student visas generally require someone to be actively studying or for the sponsoring institution to allow the student to get academic or practical training after graduation.
Immigration attorney Greg Siskind, who’s co-authored multiple editions of a guide to J-1 visas, says transitioning from a J-1 visa to an H-1B visa is a possible path. But he says a J-1 visa wouldn’t provide work authorization to someone who dropped out of a degree program. The moment Musk dropped out, he would have lost his status and been unauthorized to work, Siskind says.
“Musk would have needed to be engaged in a full course of study (at least 12 academic hours a semester) in order to qualify for work while being a J-1 student,” Siskind wrote on X.
A Stanford spokeswoman told CNN last month that the university had no record Musk had ever enrolled there, but that he had been accepted into the school’s Materials Science and Engineering graduate program. Asked if Musk ever had a student visa connected with the university, the spokeswoman said she did not know because further documentation was unavailable.
What if Musk’s visa was obtained through the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied as an undergraduate?
The same criteria would apply, Siskind says."
