Wired reports:

Elon Musk could have his United States citizenship revoked and be exposed to criminal prosecution if he lied to the government as part of the immigration process, according to legal experts.

Musk, who was born and raised in South Africa and later emigrated to Canada before eventually settling in the US and becoming a citizen, has spent more than $100 million to support Donald Trump and his nativist presidential campaign, and has personally demonized immigrants. A recent Bloomberg analysis found, for example, that Musk has posted around 1,300 times on X this year about immigration and voter fraud. Many of those posts promote the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which falsely holds that Democrats seek to replace white voters with unauthorized immigrants whose votes they control, and depicts immigrants as dangerous lawbreakers.

Earlier this week, though, The Washington Post reported that Musk was himself an immigrant who had apparently broken the law. In the 1990s, he worked illegally in the United States, according to the Post, which cited “former business associates, court records and company documents.”

In 1995, according to the Post, Musk was admitted to graduate school at Stanford but didn’t enroll in classes, instead working on an online services startup that would eventually be known as Zip2. (Stanford did not reply to requests for comment.) In 1996, the Post reported, investors made a funding agreement contingent on Musk and his brother Kimbal—who has stated that the brothers were “illegal immigrants”—obtaining authorization to work in the US within 45 days. “Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the US,” Zip2 board member Derek Proudian told the Post. [Continue reading…]