A viral image circulating on social media claims that billionaire Elon Musk does not have U.S. citizenship. “Elon Musk is NOT a Citizen of the United States and has NO Place anywhere near our government,” it reads. The image has appeared widely on sites like Threads, and Facebook.
The claim is false: While Musk was born and raised in South Africa, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2002.
While an individual’s citizenship status is not public record, Musk has discussed the challenges of becoming a citizen and his own naturalization ceremony many times.
In a November 2012 interview with Esquire, Musk spoke about the naturalization ceremony where he became a U.S. citizen. “Ten years ago — ten years after his arrival in the New World — Elon Musk took the oath of American citizenship with thirty-five hundred other immigrants at the Pomona Fairplex, in a ceremony he calls ‘actually very moving,’” the profile reads. In his 2023 biography of Musk, Walter Isaacson tells a similar story, writing that Musk became a citizen “in early 2002 at an oath-taking ceremony with thirty-five hundred other immigrants at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds.” In February, in an X post, Musk described that the citizenship process took him more than a decade.
Musk was born in South Africa in 1971, and he lived there until he moved to Canada in 1989. After studying for two years at Queen’s University in Ontario, in 1992 Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. Musk initially planned on pursuing a doctoral degree in material science at Stanford University upon graduation, but in 1995 he deferred his enrollment in order to pursue his idea of an online interactive version of the Yellow Pages.
While Musk is a U.S. citizen today, his legal working status during these early years is questionable. According to an October story in the Washington Post, Musk did not have the legal right to remain in the U.S. after he deferred his enrollment at Stanford in 1995. In a 2013 interview, Musk’s brother Kimbal admitted that the two were “illegal immigrants” when they were first approached by venture capitalists in 1996. “In fact, when they did fund us, they realized that we were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said. “Well, I’d say it was a grey area,” Elon replied. According to a funding agreement from the time obtained by the Washington Post, the two brothers were made to obtain legal work status within 45 days of the investment, which they apparently achieved.
Tesla, X, and Musk’s personal lawyer, Alex Spiro, did not respond to requests for comment from The Dispatch Fact Check.
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