Melania's parents obtain US citizenship through a way reviled by Trump
The president defends limiting family reunification, which he calls "chain immigration" and considers a security threat
Two months after receiving an avalanche of criticism for separating immigrant families, Donald Trump is being subjected to immigration taunts over a family matter. His in-laws, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, Slovenians, and the parents of his wife, Melania Trump, the first lady of the United States born in Slovenia, have obtained US citizenship by family reunification, a perfectly legal and common route but one that has been reviled by often by Trump.
The Knavs' immigration lawyer, Michael Wildes, tacitly confirmed to The New York Times that they have followed the mechanism of family reunification, that is, that they would have been able to access citizenship because their daughter Melania is already an American and would have made the petition . "I suppose," Wildes responded when the New York newspaper asked him if that had been the case, and expressly confirmed that her green card - residence permits - was on her day sponsored by her.
This wouldn't be news if Trump wasn't Trump. As it turns out, the president of the United States, who defends a very restrictive immigration policy and considers the current legislation a kind of drain for strangers who want to end the United States by taking jobs from the natives, stealing or executing terrorist acts, has attacked the regrouping of the one her in-laws have taken in. He calls this route of naturalization "chain immigration."
In November, for example, Trump tweeted: "IMMIGRATION IN THE CHAIN [capital letters hers] must end now! Some people come and bring their entire family with them, and they can be really bad people. IT'S UNACCEPTABLE! [Again, capital letters of the president] ". Presumably, the president does not consider his in-laws unacceptable or really bad, although the White House has not responded to questions from the press about his nationalization.
Viktor and Amalija Knavs, aged 74 and 73, raised Melania, born in 1970, in the Slovenian town of Sevnica (about 4,000 inhabitants). At that time Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia and the political system in which they lived was communism. He, a traveling car salesman, was a rank-and-file member of Marshal Josif Broz Tito's Communist Party. She, according to The New York Times, grew onions on her family's farm, worked in a textile factory and sewed clothes for her two daughters.
Melania Knavs - today Trump - began her modeling career as a teenager in Yugoslavia and in 1996 she made the leap to New York, one of the fashion capitals and which had in Donald J. Trump one of its most famous locals for embodying the voracious and successful capitalist from Manhattan. The two met in 1998 in the city of skyscrapers - she at 28, he at 52. In 2001 Melania received an Einstein residency visa - for people with "extraordinary abilities"; awarded, for example, to Nobel prizes. In 2005 Donald and Melania got married and a year later she would receive nationality.
Her parents, according to CNBC, have lived in the US for a decade.Since their arrival, these former inhabitants of royal socialism have lived in Trump Tower, the ostentatious New York headquarters of their son-in-law's businesses, in Mar-a -Lake, the Oval Office tenant's mansion and social club in South Florida, and in the White House itself. According to the EFE agency, they now live in a house in the wealthy suburbs of Washington and are often seen accompanying her daughter Melania on her official trips as the nation's first lady.
The nationalization ceremony of the Knavs was held this Thursday and was private. Normally it is a group act, but with them it became exclusive "for security reasons," according to her lawyer, who described the reunification as a "cornerstone" of the US immigration process. The lawyer said a few words to the press in the street accompanied by the couple and explained that his process had been the same as that of millions of people.
Neither Melania nor Donald were present at the ceremony. They are spending a few days in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the president has one of his golf clubs.
