This is genuinely contested. A 2024 Washington Post investigation reported that Musk arrived in 1995 for a Stanford graduate program he never enrolled in and instead built Zip2 — which, if his F-1 student status had lapsed, would have meant working without authorization. His brother Kimbal has said early investors learned they were "illegal immigrants." Musk disputes this, saying he was on a student work visa (likely OPT tied to F-1) and later obtained an H-1B, and he became a US citizen in 2002. There is no formal finding that he violated immigration law, and the records are ambiguous about his exact status in 1995–96. So the strongest honest statement is: there are credible reports of an early visa gray area he denies, not a proven illegality. Whether that makes him a "hypocrite" is a political judgment, not a verified fact.