In November of last year Donald Trump tweeted:
“CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!”
CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE! pic.twitter.com/PQGeTTdRtX
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017
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And last December Trump said “chain migration” and the diversity visa lottery program were to blame for two terror attacks in New York City. At the time the president said:
“We’re gonna end both of them. We’re going to end ‘em. Fast. Congress must get involved immediately, and they are involved immediately, and I can tell you we have tremendous support.”
Then in January we reported that:
“President Donald Trump is ramping up calls on the U.S. Congress to stop legal immigrants from sponsoring extended family members who want to move to the United States, saying so-called “chain migration” poses a threat to national security.”
And now it turns out that Melania Trump’s parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, just became U.S. citizens through the process of “chain migration” that has been so heavily criticized by Trump. The Knavs were sworn in as U.S. citizens earlier Thursday, during a ceremony in New York. The couple is from Slovenia, where Melania Trump was born and raised.
The attorney for the first lady’s parents told The New York Times on Thursday that their daughter had sponsored them for a green card, and that they applied for citizenship once they were eligible using the family-based migration rules.
When asked if the couple became citizens through chain migration, Wildes replied, “I suppose. It’s a dirty — a dirtier word.” Wildes told ABC News “they applied on their own.”
“It stands for a bedrock of our immigration process when it comes to family reunification,” he told the Times.
The couple had to have their green cards for five years to become eligible for citizenship, and Wildes said that the Knavs fulfilled the five-year requirement.
Trump and many conservative members of Congress have criticized the family based immigration process and have demanded it be replaced with a merit-based system that would prioritize immigrants with certain skills for green cards.
The president has called for an end to “chain migration” and has demanded that the process be evaluated in any forthcoming immigration reform.
But many have been critical of the president for allowing his own wife to use a system that he has said should not be used for others. Former campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign Robby Mook wrote on Twitter:
“Any discussion of immigration policy from this point forward must focus on the immigration record of Trump’s own family. How they got citizenship, what public benefits they received. His own policies require this line of inquiry.”
https://twitter.com/RobbyMook/status/1027722465433276418
Republican strategist Ana Navarro said, “I guess when it’s Melania’s Family, it’s ‘family reunification’ and should be applauded. Everybody else, it’s ‘chain migration’ and must be stopped.”
To make things worse, Melania Trump herself may not even have been a legal immigrant when she became a U.S. citizen. In July we reported that:
“In 2016, the Associated Press found documentation showing that Melania Trump had broken immigration law when she first came to the US in 1996 by working as a model on a tourist visa. We are not even sure if she ever cleared up her immigration status.The Trump campaign promised they would, but never did and the claims they made were never documented.”
Donald Trump attacks immigrants while his immigrant wife violated immigration laws herself. He attacks family reunification visas while his wife’s parents have just become U.S. citizens follow the “chain-migration” process.
Trump has once again proven that he is a world-class hypocrite who believes in one set of rules for him and his family, and another set of rules for everyone else. A man like that should not be President of the United States.
I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
