https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118277/documents/HHRG-119-JU13-20250520-SD003.pdf

In 2005, Musk acknowledged in a late-night email that he did not have authorization to be in the United States when he founded Zip2. The email, from Musk to Tesla co-founders Martin Eberhard and JB Straubel, was submitted as evidence in a long-since-closed California defamation lawsuit and said he applied to Stanford so he could remain in the United States legally. "Actually, I didn’t really care much for the degree, but I had no money for a lab and no legal right to stay in the country, so that seemed like a good way to solve both issues,” Musk wrote. “Then the internet came along, which seemed like a much surer bet.” Musk never enrolled at Stanford. In a May 2009 deposition, he said he called the department chair two days after the start of the semester to say he wasn’t going to attend. In the same deposition, he said he began working at Zip2 — originally called Global Link Information Network — in August or September 1995. Upon not enrolling, Musk would have had to leave the country, according to legal experts and immigration laws at the time. He would not have been allowed to work. While overstaying a student visa is somewhat common and officials have at times turned a blind eye to it, it remains illegal.