Elon Musk’s nonsensical lies about immigrant voting, briefly explained

This past weekend, X owner Elon Musk elevated a false right-wing talking point about immigration, claiming Democrats were fast-tracking citizenship applications to rig elections in the party’s favor. 

“If even 1 in 20 illegals become citizens per year, something that the Democrats are expediting as fast as humanly possible, that would be about 2 million new legal voters in 4 years,” Musk claimed. “The voting margin in the swing states is often less than 20 thousand votes. That means if the ‘Democratic’ Party succeeds, there will be no more swing states!!”

It’s a baseless allegation, and one that advances the far-right’s racist “Great Replacement Theory,” which suggests that Democrats are utilizing immigration policies to replace white Americans — in this case, white voters — with minorities. It’s also an argument that’s resonating broadly with Republicans, particularly on X, where lies about immigration have been given a large platform in recent weeks. 

These falsehoods are also being amplified by far more than just right-wing social media users. A myth about the prevalence of noncitizen voting briefly led to a government shutdown threat. Former President Donald Trump has been key to spreading these ideas, noting in the presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this year that “a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote.”

These lies — given their focus on voting — could have serious consequences as the 2024 election approaches, sowing doubts about the legitimacy of election results. 

With Trump already priming his supporters for another round of election denialism in case of a potential loss, the GOP’s fixation on noncitizens and “illegal” immigrants voting is only helping him further lay that groundwork. 

Republicans are fixated on lies about immigrant voting

Musk claims:

His claims, however, don’t match up to the facts. Here’s what we know:

Claim: Democrats are making unauthorized immigrants citizens to tilt the election in their favor.

Reality: Unauthorized immigrants aren’t broadly eligible for naturalization. To qualify for naturalization, someone generally has to have been a lawful permanent resident for five years, married to a US citizen and a lawful permanent resident for three years, or a member of the military.

Additionally, the US is approving citizenship applications at its swiftest pace in years, but it’s not because regulators are trying to skew the election in Democrats’ favor. The government is doing so because there was already a backlog that got worse during the pandemic, the Los Angeles Times reports. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is effectively doing catch-up.

The US naturalized 878,500 people in 2023 and is now processing applications in roughly 4.9 months – a pace that’s comparable to how quickly the government was approving applications in 2013. According to the New York Times, processing time for naturalization applications spiked during the Trump administration as the White House sought to reduce legal and unauthorized immigration. 

These new citizens also aren’t guaranteed Democratic voters. Polling has indicated that naturalized citizens lean Democrat, but both parties are likely to pick up some new voters as people undergo this process. According to a survey from the National Partnership for New Americans, 54 percent of naturalized citizens said they’d vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November, while 38 percent said they’d back former President Donald Trump.

It’s worth reiterating that naturalized citizens aren’t unauthorized immigrants, and that the bulk of them — roughly 83 percent, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services — have been lawful permanent residents for five years. Unauthorized immigrants have few pathways to citizenship, and many aren’t eligible for naturalization.

Claim: According to Musk, “the Biden/Harris administration has been flying ‘asylum seekers’, who are fast-tracked to citizenship, directly into swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Arizona.” 

Reality: This Republican talking point appears to refer to a “parole” program the Biden administration has approved for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans amid instability in their home countries. Under the program, people can temporarily enter the US for two years, pay for their own travel, and fly to designated places. There is no evidence that people are being flown specifically to swing states.

Additionally, parolees do not have a path to citizenship and as a result would be unable to vote in future elections. 

As legal immigrants, asylum seekers do have a path to citizenship; according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), 3.3 percent of those naturalized in 2023 came to the US as asylum seekers — roughly 29,000 people. While that might be enough to swing a state as close as Georgia was in 2020, it’s not enough to affect the outcomes in all the states Musk listed, even if Democrats were flying people there. Which, again, they aren’t.

In addition, most naturalized citizens have settled in states that are not swing states, with California, Texas, Florida, New York, and New Jersey topping the list, per USCIS.

There’s one other key conservative falsehood when it comes to immigrants and voting, and it’s one that appears to have touched off Musk’s tweet. 

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) highlighted the claim in a tweet a user responded to; Musk then responded to that post. According to Lee, “thousands of noncitizen voter files are being discovered in state after state, Democrats are trying to stop those states from removing noncitizens from their voter files.” The senator went on to claim that this is why Republicans’ failed SAVE Act, which would have required proof of citizenship to vote, should have passed.

Claim: Noncitizens are being allowed to vote and help Democrats win federal elections.

Reality: It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and noncitizens have very rarely been found to be illegally voting. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning nonprofit that focuses on voting rights, election officials responsible for the counting of nearly 23.5 million votes in 2016 identified just 30 possible cases of noncitizen voting for investigation.

Noncitizens are able to vote in some local elections for positions like City Council and school board in some jurisdictions in Vermont and California, but they aren’t able to vote anywhere in federal elections. 

Republicans are stoking immigration fears

Republicans are taking this approach because of how salient the issue is once again proving this election cycle and because more voters have said they’d do a better job on border security than Democrats. 

As Vox’s Nicole Narea reported, a majority of Americans — 55 percent, the highest proportion in years — would like to see immigration levels decrease in the US. To capitalize on these sentiments, Republicans have positioned themselves as the party with solutions on this issue, framing Democrats’ so-called laxness at the border as the cause of immigration problems. 

The issue has gained new attention amid record-high border crossings in late 2023, which have declined since, and an influx of migrants in several major cities. 

By linking existing concerns about immigration with voting, Republicans are once again using misinformation to undermine trust in the election system. Already, there’s significant skepticism about election security, in part due to Trump and other prominent leaders’ emphatic election denialism. An August ABC/Ipsos poll found nearly 25 percent of Trump supporters aren’t prepared to accept the election results, regardless of outcome. Claims that something is amiss with who is voting could exacerbate these concerns, especially if they play on existing anti-immigrant biases. 

Since Republicans are coalescing around these lies about immigrant voting, it’s not far-fetched to believe Trump, if he loses, could try to claim that noncitizens swayed the election for Harris, especially since he blamed noncitizens for his loss in 2020 and his loss of the popular vote in 2016. Should he try to do so again, he’s poised to replicate the chaos and confusion that resulted from Republicans leaning into false concerns about election fraud during the last election.