Trump Doesn’t Want Immigrants – Except for His In-Laws

Among President Donald Trump’s plans to keep more immigrants from coming to the United States is ending what he and the Republicans call “chain migration.” The official term is family reunification. That is to say, a legal resident of this country asks for permission to bring one or more members of his or her family to live here.

On several occasions the head of state has said that those families that obtain visas thanks to a relative “come in a group, steal jobs from Americans and what is worse, they are a threat to the security of the country.” “Chain migration should end. It opens the door to terrorists. Some people come and bring the whole family. Some of them can be truly bad. We won’t accept it,” Trump has said*. This is the most common legal way of moving to the United States, where in 2016 around a million immigrants arrived as immediate relatives of a resident or citizen.

The president wants the laws to be changed so that each immigrant can only bring with him or her a spouse and minor children. His intent is that priority be given to highly educated immigrants who speak English. He is determined to end the program when it does not concern the parents of his wife.

Last August, Amalija and Viktor Knavs became citizens of the United States, following the same process that their son-in-law wants so badly to eliminate. Their attorney, Michale Wildes, confirmed that they were able to do so thanks to their daughter and taking advantage of the family reunification process. As of now, neither the president nor first lady have made any statement about this case, and the White House said that it can’t comment, because the Knavs are private citizens.

To obtain United States citizenship, an individual is supposed to have a green card or legal residence for five years, supported by a member of the family or a job for which it is demonstrated that no one here can perform, as well as knowledge of civics and the language. The process can last from 11 months to two years, depending on the case, with immigrants from Mexico, India and the Philippines taking the longest to obtain citizenship.

Until recently, the Slovenian in-laws, Mrs. Knavs, 73, and Mr. Knavs, 74, just two years older than his son-in-law, lived with their daughter in the New York Trump Tower, and although they have not moved definitively to Washington, they are frequently seen in the official mansion, where, it is said, they are often with Barron, their grandson. They also travel on weekends and holidays with the presidential spouses to Mar-a-Lago, the luxurious beach club that Trump owns in Florida.

The Knavs had Melania, born Melanija, in 1970, in Sevnica, a town of 4,500 inhabitants, when Slovenia, a small republic of 2 million people, was part of Yugoslavia under the control of the socialist leader Josip Broz Tito. Mr. Knavs was a member of the Communist Party, as was everyone there at that time, and a seller of automobile parts. Mrs. Knavs made children’s clothes, including those of her two children. Their neighbors describe Melania as a shy adolescent who wanted to graduate from Ljubljana University, but in 1987, when she was 17, the photographer Stane Kerko asked her to pose for him. At 18, a Milan modeling agency signed a contract with her. She changed her last name to Knauss, which sounds more German.

She arrived for work in New York in 1996, although the legal details and her migration status at that point are not known, and soon after she would appear in a gigantic advertisement for Camel cigarillos hung in the heart of Times Square. In 1998 she met Trump, when she was 28, and he was 52 and married. The woman who is now first lady, and who speaks English, French and German in addition to Slovenian, obtained her permanent residency in 2001 under the program known as the “Einstein Visa,” which is granted to individuals with extraordinary abilities – generally scientists, professors, or investigators. In 2006, then married to the magnate, she became an American citizen.

For many it is not clear how her parents achieved citizenship; others have doubts about the process followed by Melania. The president’s critics say that the case of his in-laws reflects his hypocrisy, and that here there are two migration systems: one for the simple immigrant, people who have no power and little money; and one for those considered important and influential, who enter and stay without a problem.

*Editor’s note: The source of this quote, although accurately translated, could not be independently verified.