On Monday, former NCAA swimmer and conservative activist Riley Gaines joined Elon Musk’s immigration calls and earned his full support. The billionaire Tesla CEO eventually voiced his opinion against the tedious, “ridiculously slow & difficult” immigration procedure to finally be granted a green card in the US.
“Legal immigration to America is ridiculously slow & difficult, even for super talented people,” the SpaceX boss wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday, November 20 (US time). “Need to be fixed.”
Elon Musk supports Riley Gaines’ US immigration rant
Earlier this week, Gaines took to her own SNS profile on Musk’s platform, releasing a video of herself ranting about how her husband “STILL doesn’t have a green card” because of a particular reason. In the original TikTok video, she pointed out that her husband and British swimmer Louis Barker “moved to the United States from Europe six years ago for college.” Even though he “came here legally” and ultimately crossed paths with Gaines at the University of Kentucky, he still allegedly doesn’t have his green card. The former swimmer also noted that in the meanwhile they even tied the knot in 2022. Despite 2.5 years having elapsed since then, Barker is nowhere near to becoming a US citizen.
Also read | Elon Musk’s former LA home suffers over $3m price chop before hitting foreclosure auction block
Going into the nitty gritty of the tiresome immigration process, she detailed that only after an extended silence did they finally hear from the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), requesting “evidence” of his “completed vaccination record.” Their original plan fell apart as the conservative activist’s husband didn’t have the COVID-19 vaccination, which ultimately hindered his path to attaining US citizenship.
In a follow-up tweet, Gaines wrote, “My husband moved to America from England for college 6 years ago. We got married over 2.5 years ago. He STILL doesn’t have a green card because he won’t get the vaccine. They don’t force illegal immigrants to get the jab, just the legal ones.”
What does USCIS say about the vaccine requirement?
According to the USCIS, a noncitizen applying for a visa abroad or even someone who “seeks to adjust status to that of a lawful permanent resident while in the United States” must meet certain vaccination requirements. These include vaccines for COVID-19, mumps, polio, measles, tetanus and diphtheria toxoids, rubella, Haemophilus influenza type B, hepatitis B, and “any other vaccine-preventable diseases recommended by the Advisory Committee for Immunisation Practices.”
The official USCIS website also states, “If you refuse to receive the vaccines required for immigration purposes, as mandated by the immigration laws of the United States, your application for legal permanent resident status may be denied.”
In January 2022, the Department of Homeland Security announced that non-citizens, like Gaines’ husband, wanting to enter the country would have to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Newsweek reported that the requirement was no longer needed in May 2023.
Also read | Meghan Markle ‘wasn’t dramatic’ to brand UK media ‘racist’: Cynthia Erivo’s ‘Wicked’ omission outrages netizens
Noncitizens entering legally vs illegally
Gaines used her TikTok moment to further probe the credibility of the COVID-19 vaccine while voicing her qualms with “how hard our government has made it for people migrating into this country legally in comparison with those who break the law. Because if you walk across the southern border, you’re given housing… a driver’s license…money.” At one point during her verbal onslaught, she also claimed, “Notice I said legally because our government does not require illegal immigrants to have the COVID vaccine.”
All in all, after pointing out some “basic” concerns about the vaccine, Gaines saw it better for her husband to shun it because, in her words, “what good is a green card with compromised health?”
She concluded her tirade by saying, “When this craziness inevitably ends, because it will, my husband will become a citizen and have a functioning immune system. So it’s a win-win.”
Elon Musk on US immigration process
After Musk re-shared her post through another conservative X user’s profile, Gaines wrote back: “Our immigration system needs reform across every aspect.” Either way, she seems to have won the support of Musk, who is now also President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination for co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy.
Similarly venting about being “in favour of increased and expedited legal immigration for anyone who is talented, hard-working and honest,” the tech giant wrote in a previous X post. “It is bizarrely difficult and agonisingly slow to immigrate to the USA legally, but trivial and fast to enter illegally! This obviously makes no sense.”
Musk presumably speaks from his own past experience with the system as he moved to Canada at the age of 18, eventually earning his citizenship there through his mother. He later joined the University of Pennsylvania and ultimately moved to Silicon Valley.
In October 2024, the Washington Post reported that the South African-born businessman even worked illegally in the US for a brief period in the 1990s while building a startup company.
A day later, Musk rubbished the claims, explaining his side on social media. “I was on a J-1 visa that transitioned to an H1-B,” he wrote on X. The J-1 Exchange Visitor visa Musk spoke of allows foreign students to get academic training in the US. Meanwhile, the H1-B visa is associated with temporary employment in the country.
