Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell Law School and faculty director of its Immigration Law and Policy Program, says that it’s not clear that if Musk worked in the US without authorization and attested he hadn’t, that would be considered important enough to denaturalize him. However, he says, “on purely legal grounds, this would justify revoking citizenship, because if he had told the truth, he would not have been eligible for an H1-B, a green card, or naturalization.”
…
US law—specifically, 8 U.S.C. § 1451—allows for the revocation of naturalization if citizenship was “procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.” The classic example of the law’s application is to former Nazis who ultimately had their citizenship stripped in the US after the exposure of their hidden pasts. But the law, experts say, covers lying about having worked without authorization, and there are several points in the process at which an immigrant has to attest, under penalty of perjury, that they haven’t done so.
According to the experts, Musk’s citizenship in the United States may be based on false attestations on government forms. This is what’s known as a “crime,” and could mean that Musk’s residency here is built on loose sand. Ironic for a man so convinced that any undocumented person is a threat. But, then again, maybe his concerns go beyond documents. Maybe he’s more concerned about other factors, like securing a future for white children.
