Ed Melania Trump was an illegal immigrant?

[quadraginta]

If Melania Trump was shown to currently be an illegal immigrant, they'd have a case but the case as far as I understand it is:

<snip>

Just as a reminder. The subject of this offshoot conversation was not a question of if she is or was actually an illegal, but rather a hypothetical which you set up to discuss the relevance of such a possibility.

I don't think that whether or not Melania Trump had a valid visa when those pictures were taken should have any bearing on the election campaign.

<snip>

​

In the absence of more and stronger evidence I have no position or even opinion on the question of her actual status as a legal immigrant.

I was responding to nothing more than the position you took and the comments you offered based on your hypothetical.

Don't try to change it into a position I'm not arguing.

There's a name for that.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't think that whether or not Melania Trump had a valid visa when those pictures were taken should have any bearing on the election campaign. Donald Trump was not in a relationship with her at the time and very probably had no knowledge of the whole business. Heck, even she may not have been aware that what she was doing was breaking immigration law.

There are so many other things to take Trump to task over, I think to do this is a bush league move.

Hypocrisy not an issue for you then?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Then I'm not sure how this is embarrassing to anyone. Trump married someone who once worked illegally but he didn't know it at the time of his marriage and AFAIK there's no suggestion that her current immigration status is irregular or that she should now be deported.

Again IMO it's like an candidate who is running on an anti-drug platform whose spouse is shown to have taken drugs once in college, years before they met the candidate.

That explains why he has doubled down now, claiming she got here in 96, putting out a letter of denial in no uncertain terms likely written by campaign staff purported to be written by Melania denying what the facts say otherwise.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Quite true. The modeling industry is quite skeezy and I am sure that they break all sorts of laws when it is convienent for them to do so.

However, Melania has been constantly bragging about how she has always been in the USA legally, therefore she has explaining to do.

And asserting a false educational history, among other things like scapegoating a staffer who may or may not actually be a staffer for Melania's plagiarism.


She was in NY in 1995, going back and forth to Slovenia (or wherever she went) to renew her tourist visa. That suggests she wasn't here as a tourist. Was she supposedly so wealthy she didn't need to work then? Posing nude for men's magazines hardly sounds like your average successful modeling career.

I don't begrudge the woman using her body to get ahead, or even posing for nudies for a fee. What makes this all wrong is her shoving it in the faces of every struggling, mostly hard working immigrant here illegally.

 

[phiwum]

One of the main planks he's been building his own platform with, from the very beginning of his campaign, is that he is going to deport all the illegal immigrants.

If that were to turn out to be almost all of the illegal immigrants, except for the ones he wants to keep around for personal reasons, why wouldn't that be hypocrisy?

Is his wife a citizen now?

If so, is there any legal basis for stripping her of citizenship and deporting her?

An honest question.I don't know the answer, but it seems plausible to me that once one becomes a citizen, past violations of immigration law don't matter.

ETA: Maybe so. See this citation:

Grounds for Denaturalization

1. Falsification or Concealment of Relevant Facts: You must be absolutely truthful when filling out paperwork and answering interview questions related to the naturalization application process. Even if the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) fails to recognize any lies or ommissions at first, the agency may file a denaturalization action against you after citizenship has been granted. Examples include failure to disclose criminal activities or lying about one's real name or identity.​

If she was required to affirm that she had legal status during every visit to the U.S. and her work as a model contradicted that claim, then conceivably she could be denaturalized. I doubt this happens often, but at least its conceivable according to my reading of this clause. An actual immigration attorney would provide needed clarification here.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If Melania Trump was shown to currently be an illegal immigrant, they'd have a case but the case as far as I understand it is:

• Photographs appear to have been taken in 1995 when she was in the U.S. on a tourist visa
• There is doubt whether she was paid for those pictures (the photographer says not)
• Regardless, she later came back to the U.S. and obtained residency

She's legally a resident in the United States.


edited to add....




That's the dimension that was missing - I didn't know that this was a constant refrain of hers.

You missed a bit.

In an interview in 2005 she said she would leave the country every 6 months to renew her work visa. But work visas don't need renewing, tourists visas do. There's a question that she lied on her green card application about her marital status. There's a question that she claimed to have a college degree and it's unclear if that lie was on any of her work or citizenship applications.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Is his wife a citizen now?

If so, is there any legal basis for stripping her of citizenship and deporting her?

An honest question.I don't know the answer, but it seems plausible to me that once one becomes a citizen, past violations of immigration law don't matter.

There may very well be perjured claims on her citizenship application, thus technically a basis but no one is interested in that or pursuing such a case.

The point is the hypocrisy of making the issue of undocumented immigration a cornerstone of your platform while pretending your wife's immigration pathway was spotlessly clean.

 

[Myron Proudfoot]

so she stole jobs from good American nudie models!!

 

[pgwenthold]

You missed a bit.

In an interview in 2005 she said she would leave the country every 6 months to renew her work visa. But work visas don't need renewing, tourists visas do. There's a question that she lied on her green card application about her marital status. There's a question that she claimed to have a college degree and it's unclear if that lie was on any of her work or citizenship applications.

Ooo, Green Card application. Good question. Did she claim to have a college degree?

I write a lot of letters for students to get Green Cards, and the fact they have a degree is an issue that gets considered. If she lied about having her college degree, that would be serious grounds for revoking her green card.

 

[phiwum]

There may very well be perjured claims on her citizenship application, thus technically a basis but no one is interested in that or pursuing such a case.

The point is the hypocrisy of making the issue of undocumented immigration a cornerstone of your platform while pretending your wife's immigration pathway was spotlessly clean.

I wasn't addressing whether this situation, if true, should be an embarrassment to the Trump campaign. Just whether intellectual consistency requires that she be deported.

I'm still not sure about that, but (1) intellectual consistency and Trump are not two concepts that go together and (2) whether this is the sort of offense which supports deportation.

But, yeah, if it's the case that she performed work on a tourist visa, it should be an embarrassment to a campaign which is used to embarrassments.

 

[newyorkguy]

...Fine, but again, why drag his wife's possible illegal working into it ?...

How about a teenager who was brought here at the age of 1 or 2 by parents seeking better opportunities? A child who remembers nothing of her native country, who has no contacts there, no where to go in that country etc. Would it be just and humane to deport her? You know what Trump's answer is?

"They have to go. They have to."

This incident with his (third) wife sticks in a lot of people's craw because it illustrates that immigration issues are complex and sometimes nuanced. And that's something neither Trump or his wife agree with, at least in public. Melania, who had many more opportunities growing up than some of the Hispanics who sneak into the U.S. to find work, has said: "I obeyed the law. Why is that difficult to do?"

A journalist wrote about talking with Trump supporters following a rally. As a kind of test he would describe a young girl who is in a situation such as I described above. The journalist had covered her story. (At the present time she's in a federal detention center awaiting deportation.) He said almost without exception none of the supporters actually agreed with the across-the-board deportation process that Trump advocates. Instead, when this real life case was described to them, one that doesn't fit knee-jerk stereotypes, they usually asked, "Is she a nice person?" and when told she seemed to be a very nice person, responded "Well maybe in cases like that...there should be some alternative to deporting her."

But The Don, being a dumpster fire, doesn't see it that way.

"They have to go. They have to."

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

....But, yeah, if it's the case that she performed work on a tourist visa, it should be an embarrassment to a campaign which is used [oblivious] to embarrassments.

ftfy

 

[phiwum]

ftfy

Not keen on ftfy posts, though I agree with the sentiment in this case.

 

[steve s]

Ooo, Green Card application. Good question. Did she claim to have a college degree?

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Donald was the one who started the lie. He has an insatiable need to inflate everything into something it isn't. His first wife Ivana was an accomplished skier, but Trump had to inflate her into an Olympian (she wasn't.)

Steve S

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Is his wife a citizen now?

If so, is there any legal basis for stripping her of citizenship and deporting her?

An honest question.I don't know the answer, but it seems plausible to me that once one becomes a citizen, past violations of immigration law don't matter.

ETA: Maybe so. See this citation:

Grounds for Denaturalization

1. Falsification or Concealment of Relevant Facts: You must be absolutely truthful when filling out paperwork and answering interview questions related to the naturalization application process. Even if the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) fails to recognize any lies or ommissions at first, the agency may file a denaturalization action against you after citizenship has been granted. Examples include failure to disclose criminal activities or lying about one's real name or identity.​

If she was required to affirm that she had legal status during every visit to the U.S. and her work as a model contradicted that claim, then conceivably she could be denaturalized. I doubt this happens often, but at least its conceivable according to my reading of this clause. An actual immigration attorney would provide needed clarification here.

I doubt there's anything like an automatic pardon, but probably standard practice is not to pursue once people become citizens, unless it is very egregious.

 

[ddt]

The plot thickens.

There's a slight error in that article. It says Melanija was born in the Republic of Slovenia, which is not true; she was born in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

That doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. Trump has taken an anti-illegal immigrant stance and one with which I profoundly disagree but what do we expect him to do when he finds out that his wife of 11 years had some photographs taken 21 years ago when she didn't have a suitable work permit ?

If we expect him to suddenly change his policy that would make no sense. Even if he suddenly had a road to Damascus moment, it's still a policy that plays well to the GOP.

Expecting his to disown his wife is equally unrealistic. The events happened 10 years before their wedding and probably well before he knew her. He is not responsible for her actions at the time and IMO it's realistic to assume that he was unaware of them right up until the time when the story broke.

Well, yes, actually I fully expect him to do that. When you're tough on immigration, you should be consistent. I present to you Rita Verdonk, former Dutch Minister of Immigration. When she heard that Ayaan Hirsi Ali Magan - an MP for her own party - had lied about her name and DOB, she decided to strip her of the Dutch nationality. And I bet the house that if the statute of limitations had not run out of that, she would also have stripped her of her green card and thrown her out of the country. (And in the end, as you can read, the rest of the cabinet overruled her and this led to a government crisis).

There's not only the story of the photo shoot in 1995, but also how Melanija got a green card in 2001 based on a marriage. So she was married? As I understand from a friend who's waiting for his K-1 visa so he can go to the USA and marry his American fiancée, you first have to specifically request a visa to marry your fiancée, or it really has to be love-at-first-sight.

But irrespective of what Trump does, I dearly hope the INS is going to look into this sordid story. The law is there for everybody equally, rich and poor, black and white. And when a rich girl like Melanija gets a pass for violations of immigration law for which poor Mexicans are deported, yes, there is class justice. So the INS has every reason to be tough on her to show that the law works equally for all.

 

[ddt]

I doubt there's anything like an automatic pardon, but probably standard practice is not to pursue once people become citizens, unless it is very egregious.

Look again. phiwum quoted grounds for denaturalization, i.e., grounds to strip someone of their citizenship.

The interesting thing, AFAIK, is that there is no statute of limitations on it in the USA. You could technically be revoked your citizenship if you lied on a visa application 30 years ago.

 

[phiwum]

Look again. phiwum quoted grounds for denaturalization, i.e., grounds to strip someone of their citizenship.

The interesting thing, AFAIK, is that there is no statute of limitations on it in the USA. You could technically be revoked your citizenship if you lied on a visa application 30 years ago.

What I quoted suggests that denaturalization is possible.

What TubbaBlubba said (and sounds plausible to me) is that denaturalization is probably very rarely used and only in the most egregious cases.

These two statements are not in disagreement. It is possible that you get a speeding ticket for doing 57 in a 55mph zone, but it does not happen very often at all.

 

[Babbylonian]

What I quoted suggests that denaturalization is possible.

What TubbaBlubba said (and sounds plausible to me) is that denaturalization is probably very rarely used and only in the most egregious cases.

These two statements are not in disagreement. It is possible that you get a speeding ticket for doing 57 in a 55mph zone, but it does not happen very often at all.

Except that no one is telling us that speeders are ruining our nation. There is no major party candidate for national office campaigning on a platform of permanently depriving speeders of their driver's licenses.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

There's a slight error in that article. It says Melanija was born in the Republic of Slovenia, which is not true; she was born in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

I think that technically Yugoslavia (like the USSR) was a federation, so that there was a Republic of Slovenia even before the dissolution of Yugoslavia.