Normally I leave First Ladies alone.
They are not the office holder. They are not setting policy. However, these are not normal times.
First Lady “I really don’t care. Do U?” has earned another look.
Was Melania Trump an undocumented immigrant who worked illegally in the U.S.? (2016)
“I followed the law. I never thought to stay here without papers. I had a visa, I traveled every few months back to the country to Slovenia to stamp the visa. I came back, I applied for the green card, I applied for the citizenship later on after many years of green card. So I went by system, I went by the law. And you should do that, you should not just say let me stay here and whatever happens, happens.”
But Politico reports that a wealth of evidence—including the nude photo
shoot that graced the cover of The New York Post last weekend—suggests that she was, in fact, an undocumented immigrant who worked in this country illegally. Politico places her in the United States one year earlier than she has previously claimed, and says she may have been on a B-1 business visa, not an H-1B work visa—which means that she likely committed visa fraud and worked in the country illegally…
Of course, Trump’s illegal immigration rhetoric is largely about race and kicking brown people out of what Trump’s white voters think is a white country, not white super-models taking jobs away from other white super-models. But on the surface, at least, Donald Trump’s wife may be the exact kind of immigrant that he’s been railing against for the last thirteen months. newrepublic.com/...
Lock Her Up!
Melania Trump’s sketchy immigration history, explained
If a new Associated Press report is right, Melania Trump herself was once an “illegal” immigrant.
Nov 2016- The Associated Press has found documentation showing that Melania Trump broke immigration law when she first came to the US in 1996 — by entering the country on a tourist visa and then working as a professional model. It’s an ironic twist for a presidential campaign that’s marked itself by casting aspersions on immigrants in general, and “illegal” immigrants in particular, for the past 17 months...
According to the AP, Melania Knauss (her maiden name) first came to the US in August 1996 on a B1/B2 “tourist visa.” Tourist visas allow someone to stay in the US for six months, but they can’t seek employment in the US during that time. Then on October 18, 1996, the AP found, she got an H-1B visa for “skilled workers” allowing her to work legally in the US as a model.
The problem is that the AP’s documentation shows that Melania was “paid for 10 modeling assignments between September 10 and October 15” — while she was still on the tourist visa. In other words, she was working on a visa that didn’t legally permit her to work — and thus was violating the terms by which she’d been allowed to come to the US… it is also entirely possible that Melania knowingly committed visa fraud; that, in fact, she lied to US immigration officials when entering the country in August 1996 about her intentions to work while in the US. That’s not just an immigration violation but an outright federal crime. www.vox.com/… [My bolding]
Thanks a lot, Einstein
What is the Einstein visa? And how did Melania Trump get one?
Melania Trump obtained US citizenship on a visa reserved for immigrants with "extraordinary ability" and "sustained national and international acclaim", according to a report in the Washington Post.
Nicknamed the "Einstein Visa", the EB-1 is in theory reserved for people who
are highly acclaimed in their field - the government cites Pulitzer, Oscar, and Olympic winners as examples - as well as respected academic researchers and multinational executives.
Mrs Trump began applying for the visa in 2000, when she was Melania Knauss, a Slovenian model working in New York and dating Donald Trump. She was approved in 2001, one of just five people from Slovenia to win the coveted visa that year, according to the Post. www.bbc.com/...
Melania, would your extraordinary ability get one arrested if performed in public?
Because I don’t think America’s dearth of models was the reason you got in.
MELANIA TRUMP’S PARENTS WOULD HAVE STRUGGLED TO COME TO THE U.S. UNDER TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION PLAN
May 2019- President Trump’s proposed plan to overhaul the U.S. immigration system would have made it more difficult for his in-laws to migrate to the United States.
First lady Melania Trump, who immigrated from Slovenia in 1996 for modeling, likely brought her parents over through a family unification process that Trump wants to limit, immigration experts say. The president announced Thursday the contours of a plan that would include increasing the percentage of highly skilled immigrants and decreasing the number of those sponsored by family members living lawfully in the United States.
About two-thirds of green cards, denoting legal permanent residence, are issued to people through family ties, and 12 percent are based on merit. The White House wants 57 percent of all green cards to be given to highly skilled workers and just a third to family, with priority given to spouses and children. www.washingtonpost.com/...
It’s the racism, stupid.
What problem, exactly, is Trump trying to solve?
...Underlying all of this is the strong suspicion among Trump’s critics that racism is at the core of his immigration policy.
Trump has a long history of racist statements and actions, and at a now-
infamous White House meeting, he reportedly told senators that he didn’t want people from “shithole countries” coming here and that the United States should, instead, seek immigrants from places like Norway.
That was not a commentary about the overall volume of legal immigration, the balance of skills versus family ties as entry criteria, or the precise labor market impact of immigrant flows. Instead, he seemed to be expressing a form of disgust at African and Latin American immigration in contrast to European immigration.
That Trump does not seem especially outraged about violating the terms of a visa or alarmed by “chain migration” when the visa violator and chain migrants are all white people from Slovenia underscores that suspicion. www.vox.com/...