President Joe Biden recently attacked Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, accusing him of inconsistency regarding immigration. In a campaign event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 26, Biden reminded that Musk, who recently became the richest man in the world, started his career in the United States as an “illegal immigrant. Biden also linked Musk to the former President Donald Trump, describing him as Trump’s “wealthy new friend.”
Biden’s remarks are expulsion of the increased emphasis on the immigration issue as the 2024 United States Presidential elections draw nearer. He accused Musk and Republicans of not fixing the problem with the border because of not supporting reforms on immigration. In response, Musk cleared the records on his social media handle formerly known as X (Twitter) that he first came to the US on a J-1 Visa but later got an H-1B Visa. Musk queried in his tweet, “Losing the election is making them desperate.”
In 1995, as the Paper pointed out, Musk may have been conducting business in the United States illegally, only a year after he had left a graduate program at Stanford to start Zip 2, which later sold for $ 300 million. Legally speaking, the Post says that most J-1 visa holders cannot quit a program of study to embark on a business venture, even a non-profit one, let alone for an unpaid position.
Elon Musk, a key backer of Trump for a second term, praises Trump immigration policies and has condemned the Biden administration ‘open borders’ policy. Musk accused Democrats of ‘importing voters’ through immigration policies – something he was once ‘extremely pro-immigrant.’
This being a time when immigration is a focal point of the November 5 election this particular address equally responds to similar national issues. Some of the issues that the United States currently experiences include increasing rates of the illegals crossing into the border, an overloaded asylum system and many resources that have almost reached their demand level.
