Riley Gaines says her immigrant husband has been waiting two years to get a green card and joins Elon Musk in calling for expedited immigration for “anyone who is talented, hard-working and honest.”

Elon Musk and former college swimming star Riley Gaines are calling for faster legal pathways to immigration.

Gaines took to social media following Musk’s recent comments on immigration, revealing that her own immigrant husband has been waiting two years to get a green card.

The Tesla and Twitter boss said his frequent complaints about the immigration crisis led to him being accused of being “anti-immigrant.”

However, he explained that as an immigrant (born in South Africa and moving to the United States to attend college) “nothing could be further from the truth.”

“I am all for increased and accelerated legal immigration for anyone who is talented, hardworking and honest,” he wrote on Twitter.

‘It is strangely difficult and agonizingly slow to immigrate legally to the United States, but trivial and fast to enter illegally! Obviously this doesn’t make sense.’

Musk moved to Canada at age 18 and obtained citizenship there through his mother, and a few years later he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and then came to Silicon Valley.

Gaines enthusiastically reposted Musk’s tweet. He did not comment directly on the border crisis, but he has denounced it in the past.

‘My husband is an immigrant. We’ve been married for almost two years and he still doesn’t have his green card,’ he wrote.

Musk’s tweet drew a misleading equivalence between the thousands of asylum seekers who cross the border every day and the process of acquiring permanent residency in the United States.

Immigrants who cross the border and turn themselves in to authorities are largely allowed to remain in the United States, but only until their asylum claims are heard.

If their application is rejected, they are deported to their country of origin. If accepted, they would face the same lengthy process as Gaines’ husband to obtain a green card.

The problem is that the process takes months or years due to bottlenecks in the system, even more so with the increase in immigrants in the last 18 months.

President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address that the bipartisan immigration bill crafted in the Senate would reduce processing times to six months, or even six weeks.

However, the legislation was defeated in the Republican-controlled House at the behest of Donald Trump, who wanted to use the issue against Biden in the election campaign.

If implemented in practice, as Biden promised in his speech, the bill would speed up pathways to legal immigration, as Musk and Gaines called for.

In recent days, Musk has accused Democrats of remaining indifferent to the border crisis as part of a long-term strategy to improve his electoral fortunes.

“Until the loss of votes from the arrival of large numbers of illegal immigrants outweighs the likely gain of votes over time (as they gradually legalize), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration,” he wrote. .

In another post, he stated that the crisis was likely to lead to a major terrorist attack.

“This administration is importing voters and creating a national security threat from unauthorized illegal immigrants,” he wrote.

‘It is very likely that the groundwork is being laid for something much worse than 9/11. It’s just a matter of time.’

Musk expanded on this on Friday, criticizing Democrats for unanimously opposing a bill that would not count immigrants in the population figures used to determine the number of congressional seats and electoral votes each state had.

‘Since the illegals are mostly in Democratic states, both the House and the presidential vote shift ~5% to the left, which is enough to shift the entire balance of power!’ he wrote.

“This is one of the main reasons why the Biden Administration is ushering in record levels of illegals and conducting so few deportations.”

Musk also responded to Biden’s admission that the government flew 325,000 migrants into the United States to relieve pressure at the border.

He called it a “betrayal” and again accused Democrats of “importing voters.”

“This is why far-left groups are fighting so hard to stop voter ID requirements, under the absurd pretext of protecting the right to vote,” he wrote.

It was unclear whether he was claiming that Democrats were encouraging voter fraud by noncitizen immigrants by opposing ID requirements.

The entry of immigrants by plane into the United States was part of the former “humanitarian parole” and applies to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

These immigrants, capped at 30,000 per month, must pass a background check and have a sponsor in the United States, and can obtain work permits.

“Humanitarian parole does not provide any permanent path to remain in the United States and may be revoked or not renewed if DHS decides it is no longer warranted or if the beneficiary violates the conditions of parole,” explained the American Immigration Council. .

All of these immigrants applied through designated channels and did not cross the border or would not be eligible for the program.

About 10,000 migrants crossed the border and turned themselves in to authorities to request asylum every day at the height of the crisis over New Year’s.

Texas has borne the brunt of the crossings, particularly in Eagle Pass, and Gov. Gregg Abbott responded by sending 105,000 and counting to Democrat-run “sanctuary cities” like New York, Chicago and Denver.

The majority of the immigrants are Venezuelans, seven million of whom fled political turmoil and violence in their country in recent years.