Hunter Biden’s blistering attack on Elon Musk has returned to social media, dragging an old and still-disputed chapter of the billionaire’s immigration history back into the spotlight.
The clip is not new. Biden made the remarks during a lengthy July 2025 interview with independent journalist Andrew Callaghan of Channel 5. A transcript of the interview was published on July 23, 2025. In the exchange, Biden was discussing immigration and what he sees as the importance of immigrants to American economic and cultural life when he turned his attention to Musk.
“You’ve got some motherf—er who’s made over $251 billion being a United States citizen,” Biden said, before claiming Musk “got here and stayed here illegally before he got his citizenship” and was now “lecturing us on who we should allow into the United States of America.”
It was classic Hunter Biden: profane, combative and delivered with little interest in softening the edges. But beneath the rhetoric sits a complicated factual dispute about Musk’s early years in the United States.
Musk’s immigration history has faced real questions
Musk was born in South Africa and later moved to Canada before coming to the United States for college. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2002.
The controversy centers on what happened in the mid-1990s.
According to a 2024 Washington Post investigation subsequently reported by Reuters and the Associated Press, Musk arrived in Palo Alto, California, in 1995 intending to attend graduate school at Stanford University. He did not enroll and instead worked on the company that became Zip2.
That distinction mattered because his immigration status was connected to his studies.
The Washington Post cited immigration experts who said Musk would have needed to maintain the required student status to have appropriate authorization. The paper also reported that former associates recalled Musk obtaining U.S. work authorization around 1997.
The AP reported an additional detail: a 2005 email attributed to Musk, which surfaced in litigation, said he lacked authorization to be in the country when he began Zip2 and had applied to Stanford in part so he could remain legally. Investors in Zip2 reportedly became worried about his immigration situation and pushed for him to obtain a work visa.
Musk has strongly disputed the characterization that he worked illegally.
After then-President Joe Biden cited the Washington Post reporting in 2024, Musk responded that he “was in fact allowed to work in the US.” He later said he had been on a J-1 visa that transitioned to an H-1B visa.
So Hunter Biden’s underlying criticism has factual reporting behind it, but the immigration question is not an uncontested fact. Musk denies that he was working illegally.
Biden’s wording goes further than the evidence
There is also an important difference between the viral description of Biden’s remarks and what he actually said.
Biden did not say Musk remained illegally in the United States “until he got his citizenship.” His recorded wording was that Musk had stayed illegally “before he got his citizenship.”
That distinction matters.
Musk became an American citizen in 2002, while the Washington Post reported that he obtained work authorization around 1997. Therefore, the available reporting does not support the idea that Musk remained without authorization all the way until naturalization five years later.
Biden’s money figure is easier to understand, although his wording is loose. He said Musk had “made over $251 billion.” Net worth is not the same thing as money earned, and billionaire wealth can fluctuate dramatically because much of it comes from ownership stakes rather than cash income.
Still, Musk’s estimated fortune comfortably exceeded $251 billion around the time of Biden’s interview. Forbes-based estimates placed his net worth at roughly $393 billion in July 2025.
The larger argument was about immigration hypocrisy
Biden was not offering an immigration-law lecture. He was making a political argument about hypocrisy.
Immediately before attacking Musk, Biden praised immigration as one of the forces that continually renews the United States and helps the country attract talented people from around the world. He then presented Musk, himself an immigrant who eventually became an American citizen, as an unlikely figure to take a hard line on who should enter the country.
Musk has repeatedly criticized illegal immigration and has promoted arguments favoring tougher enforcement. His immigration rhetoric became especially prominent as he supported Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. Reuters noted at the time that Musk had endorsed Trump while Trump was campaigning on a sweeping deportation agenda.
That political contrast is what gives Biden’s resurfaced rant its punch.
But the cleanest factual reading is more nuanced than the viral version. There is credible reporting that Musk worked in the United States without proper authorization during part of his early entrepreneurial career. Musk disputes that conclusion. He became a citizen in 2002, and reporting indicates he obtained work authorization years before then.
Hunter Biden’s insult may be memorable. The immigration record requires a few more sentences.
