You can’t turn on the television without hearing Republicans screaming about immigration. They are at the border, screaming at Biden for not being at the border with them. Most of the people trying to get into the country are doing it for humanitarian reasons…they are escaping gangs and poverty and cartel wars. They are seeking asylum, and safety. They know that unless they get somewhere safe, they will die.

When people simply want to move to the U.S. for other reasons, it’s obviously a much different process. It takes years, filled with background checks and interviews and lotteries. The average Joe wanting to become a U.S. citizen must also have a perfect record and a squeaky-clean past…but apparently, the rules don’t apply to Melania Trump’s father, Viktor Knavs.

Having previously lived on green cards sponsored by Melania, who moved to the United States from Slovenia to work as a model in 1996, the Knavs’ swore an oath of citizenship in a naturalization ceremony in New York in 2018 – taking advantage of a form of “chain migration” that Donald Trump had constantly railed against and previously tried to appeal.

So who is Viktor Knavs?

A member of the Communist Party as a young man, 79-year-old Viktor lived in the rural town of Sevnica in Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia, which was best known for its medieval castle and annual salami festival – at least until his son-in-law’s unexpected ascent to the White House.

In the former Yugoslavia, membership in the Communist Party was a highly-coveted privilege reserved for an elite few – it’s not known how Viktor won his place, although some have speculated that his job as a chauffeur for a mayor of a neighboring town may have played a part. You’d think more conservatives would care that Melania’s father was a Communist, since they are constantly accusing Biden of turning the country into a Communist country.

According to the New York Times, Knavs was described by former neighbors as a “larger than life” character, who carried himself in much the same way as his future son-in-law, Donald Trump, and had a fondness for Mercedes and Maserati cars.

After working as a chauffeur, Viktor became a traveling car salesman before eventually opening up a moderately successful shop selling bicycles and spare car parts.

He met his wife Amalija in 1966 and the pair had a daughter, Ines, before Melania was born in 1970. The family moved to a government-owned housing block for workers of a nearby textile factory and later bought an apartment in the capital city of Ljubljana.

The building’s superintendent, Joze Vuk recalled that Viktor “always wore a tie, smart clothes, and carried a briefcase. You could not avoid noticing him.”

Donald Trump described his father-in-law as “pretty successful” in a 2016 interview. “It’s a different kind of success than you have here. But he was successful.”

Viktor has now put his humble Slovenian beginnings behind him and spends most of his time at Mar-a-Lago, his son-in-law’s glamorous beach resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

There was also a rumor that Knavs had a home in Maryland that he shared with his wife, Barron, and Melania, back when Trump was president.

But Knavs also has a hidden past that includes a criminal record.

The Daily Beast claims that Melania Trump’s biographer discovered that Viktor Knavs had a record with the Yugoslavian secret police back in Slovenia.

Author Igor Omerza said that when he was reading through the database of the archives of the secret police archives, Knavs was revealed as having a criminal record. Despite this fact, Viktor and his wife, Melania’s mother, both easily became U.S. citizens.

Viktor Knavs was listed as a person with a criminal record, being found guilty of two items in the “Yugoslav Penal Code.” There are no details of the crime committed, but the report indicates that it was related to “the acquisition, sale or production of goods without the explicit permission of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.”

A person convicted of those crimes would normally face up to 10 years in jail, as well as significant fines.

David Leopold, an immigration lawyer, says that Knavs’s criminal background would have most definitely stopped him from becoming a U.S. citizen if he were anyone else but Melania’s daddy.

Michael Wildes, the immigration lawyer for Melania Trump’s parents, said there is nothing strange going on and they followed the rules 100%.

“Mr. Knavs’s application for U.S. citizenship was properly executed and adjudicated, consistent with the Immigration and Nationality Act. His naturalization process was no different than anyone else seeking citizenship in this country.”

But again, it shows off Republican hypocrisy. Immigrants who are fleeing unimaginable horror are demonized and treated as animals, but see no problem giving citizenship to a white, European male who was a former Communist with a criminal record.