Riley Gaines says her immigrant husband has been waiting two years for a green ... trends now
Elon Musk and former college swim star Riley Gaines have called for faster legal avenues for immigration.
The Tesla and Twitter boss said his frequent complaints about the migrant crisis led to him being accused of being 'anti-immigrant'.
However, he explained that as an immigrant himself - being born in South Africa and moving to the US for university - 'nothing could be further from the truth'.
'I am very much in favor of increased and expedited legal immigration for anyone who is talented, hard-working and honest,' he wrote on Twitter.
'It is bizarrely difficult and agonizingly slow to immigrate to the USA legally, but trivial and fast to enter illegally! This obviously makes no sense.'
Elon Musk said his frequent complaints about the migrant crisis led to him being accused of being 'anti-immigrant', but he actually wanted more of it through proper channels
About 10,000 migrants were crossing the border and surrendering to authorities to claim asylum every day at the height of the crisis over the New Year
Musk moved to Canada aged 18 and got citizenship there via his mother, and a few years later studied at the University of Pennsylvania, then came to Silicon Valley.
Gaines reposted Musk's tweet with enthusiastic agreement. She didn't directly comment on the border crisis, but has denounced it in the past.
'My husband is an immigrant. We've been married for nearly two years and he still doesn't have his green card,' she wrote.
Musk's tweet drew a misleading equivalence between the thousands of asylum-seekers crossing the border every day, and the process of acquiring US permanent residency.
Migrants who cross the border and surrender to authorities are largely allowed to stay in the US, but only until their asylum claims are heard.
Should their claim be denied, they are deported back to their country of origin. If accepted, they would face the same lengthy process as Gaines' husband to get a green card.
The problem is the process takes months, or years, due to bottlenecks in the system, even more so with the migrant surge of the past 18 months.
Gaines reposted Musk's tweet with enthusiastic agreement, revealing that her immigrant husband was frustrated waiting for his green card
Migrants cross the Rio Grande river to surrender to the American authorities in El Paso, Texas
President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address that the bipartisan immigration bill hammered out in the Senate would slash processing times to six months, or even six weeks.
However, the legislation was killed in the Republican-controlled House at the urging of Donald Trump, who wanted to use the issue against Biden in the election campaign.
The bill would, if implemented in practice as Biden promised in his speech, speed up avenues for legal immigration as Musk and Gaines called for.
Musk has in recent days accused Democrats of sitting on their hands over the border crisis as part of a long-term strategy to improve their electoral fortunes.
'Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants
