Human Rights
Since Melania Trump’s Mother Passed, Reporters Got Her Immigration Records and Get Ready for Some Hypocrisy
We already know Donald Trump is a huge hypocrite. But just how big of a hypocrite is he? This big of a hypocrite: He remained quiet when the wifey, Melania Trump sponsored her mom’s immigration to the U.S. through a family-based process that, under normal circumstances, he vehemently opposes. He even attempted to end the program, The Washington Post reports, citing federal immigration records that were released Monday.
These records show for the first time the full path Amalija Knavs, Melania’s mom, took from Slovenia to the United States. But that’s not all โ they also show how the Trump administration’s policies could have thrown a real monkeywrench in this process for others. Knavs, 78, died in January.
Trump will likely be the Republican candidate for president in the 2024 race against Democratic President Joe Biden.
To bring her mom to the U.S. Melania used a legal pathway that her husband and his top advisers continually attacked as “chain migration,” a legal procedure that allows U.S. citizens to bring their parents to the United States. According to federal law established in 1965, U.S. citizens can apply to bring minor children and parents to join them in the U.S. without the usual long wait for a visa. Citizens can sponsor siblings and adult children, but that typically takes more time.
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While he was president, Trump endorsed the Raise Act, which would have limited priority sponsorship to spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, thereby removing parents from the fast-track list.
โThe Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc.,โ Trump tweeted on Dec. 29, 2017. โWe must protect our Country at all cost!โ
The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc. We must protect our Country at all cost!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017
Trump favored implementing a Canadian-style point-based merit system to prioritize skilled workers, which also could have affected Knavs.
Michael Wildes, Knavs’s immigration, declined the Post’s request for comment on her immigration file, saying in a telephone interview Monday, that such records are typically confidential. The Post then requested the records from the Department of Homeland Security after Knavs’s passing. Privacy protections are diminished after death.
The 165-page immigration file, released Monday, is heavily redacted in places but it confirms that Melania Trump’s mother was sponsored by an adult child for a green card. Melania Trump is listed as the financial sponsor for her mom.
Wildes is probably used to political shenanigans. He’s a Democrat and he lauds family-based immigration as part of a respected tradition in the U.S. He says Trump’s criticism of this system is due to “some of the silly politics of the day.” He also said Melania’s mother and father “reveled in becoming citizens in this country,” and she wanted to make sure her parents were “taken care of” and that they would be able to travel freely to the U.S. to take care of the Trump’s son, Barron.
The former First Lady applied to sponsor her mom for legal permanent residency, known as a green card, in 2008, according to the records and signed an affidavit the following year pledging to support her mother financially.
She applied to sponsor her mother for legal permanent residency, known as a green card, in 2008, the records show, and signed an affidavit the following year pledging to support her mother financially. Knavs became a legal permanent resident, which is just a step before U.S. citizenship on March 16, 2010. She then applied for citizenship in August 2017.
She took the oath of citizenship with her husband, Viktor. His immigration records aren’t public, on August 9, 2018, in New York, right as Trump was in perhaps one of the worst debacles of his presidency. His administration separated migrant parents and children at the border with no plan to reunite them.
Trump has done a lot of cruel things but this has got to be right up there with the worst of them. I don’t fully understand why he’s an avid racist, but he is, and placing young children in detention camps was a horrible thing to do, and this led to some children dying during his time in office. This is inexcusable and if Trump had been more reasonable, do you think this would have happened?
That’s how big a hypocrite Trump really is. Does anyone think he even cares?
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