Melania Trump sponsored her mother to immigrate to the United States through a family-based process that former president Donald Trump aggressively sought to end, according to federal immigration records released Monday.
Trump is the likely Republican candidate for president in the 2024 race against President Biden, a Democrat. The Trump campaign declined to comment through a spokeswoman.
Melania Trump used a legal pathway that her husband and his top advisers had repeatedly disparaged as “chain migration,” the right of U.S. citizens to bring their parents to the United States.
Federal law since 1965 has said U.S. citizens may apply to bring minor children and parents to join them in the United States without having to wait a long time for a visa. Citizens may sponsor siblings and adult children, but they typically wait longer for visas.
During his presidency, Trump endorsed a bill called the Raise Act that would have limited priority sponsorship to the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, taking parents off the fast-track list.
“The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc.,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 29, 2017. “We must protect our Country at all cost!”
Trump favored implementing a Canadian-style point-based merit system to prioritize skilled workers, which also could have affected Knavs.
On her 2009 immigrant visa application, Knavs said she graduated from high school in 1964 and attended the College for Fashion Design in Slovenia until 1966, though it did not say whether she obtained a diploma. She married in 1967.
By the time Knavs applied for an immigrant visa, records show she was fluent in Slovenian but “learning English.” Her citizenship application says she retired in 1998.
Michael Wildes, Knavs’s immigration lawyer, declined to comment on her immigration file in a telephone interview Monday, saying such records are typically confidential. The Washington Post requested the records from the Department of Homeland Security after Knavs’s death, when privacy protections are diminished.
The 165-page immigration file released Monday is heavily redacted in some parts, but it confirms that Knavs was sponsored by an adult child for a green card, and it lists the financial sponsor of the parent as “Melania Trump.”
Wildes, a Democrat, praised family-based immigration as part of a long tradition in the United States and called Trump’s criticism of that system “some of the silly politics of the day.”
He said that the Knavses “reveled in becoming citizens in this country” and that Melania Trump wanted to ensure that her parents were “taken care of” and that they could travel freely to the United States to care for the Trumps’ son, Barron.
Wildes has said that Melania Trump arrived in the United States from Slovenia in 1996 for modeling work and obtained a green card around 2001 based on her “extraordinary ability” as a model.
Records show that Knavs was a regular visitor to the United States after her daughter moved to this country and became a permanent resident.
Melania Trump married Donald Trump in 2005 and had their son the following year. She said she also became a citizen in 2006.
She applied to sponsor her mother for legal permanent residency, known as a green card, in 2008, the records show, and signed an affidavit the following year pledging to support her mother financially.
Knavs became a legal permanent resident, one step before U.S. citizenship, on March 16, 2010.
Green-card holders may apply for U.S. citizenship after five years. But records show Knavs waited longer.
She applied in August 2017, a few months after Trump took office and as he was criticizing “chain migration.”
In May 2018, Knavs appeared in New York for an interview and citizenship test, which involves questions in English and a test on U.S. civics. She correctly answered questions such as the name of the U.S. national anthem (“The Star-Spangled Banner”) and the ocean on the west coast of the United States (Pacific).
Asked “What is the ‘rule of law?’” she gave no answer.
Wildes has said the family received no special treatment. Records show Knavs filled out a citizenship application, answering questions about whether she was associated with the Communist Party (no) and whether she would bear arms to defend the United States (yes). She paid the $725 application fee and said she was living at the time in Trump Tower in New York.
Knavs took the oath of citizenship with her husband, Viktor — whose immigration records are not public — on Aug. 9, 2018, in New York, shortly after one of the worst debacles of Trump’s presidency, when his administration separated migrant parents from their children at the southern border without a plan to reunite them.
Melania Trump garnered attention in June 2018 for visiting a children’s shelter on the border wearing a green jacket with a message on the back reading, “I really don’t care, do u?”
Wildes had earlier confirmed that Viktor and Amalija Knavs, as well as their other daughter, Ines, who is Barron’s godmother, came to the United States legally with Melania Trump’s help, according to “The Art of Her Deal,” a biography of Melania Trump by Post reporter Mary Jordan.
