Yesterday, on the Daily Show, Tevor Noah pointed out that Donald Trump’s anti-immigration talking points could be taken to be curiously tied to his own wife Melania’s migration story.
Trevor went so far as to posit that this entire immigration kerfluffle might just be Donnie’s round-about way of disposing of his domestic doyenne.
And to show solidarity to a fellow immigrant, Noah graciously created a hashtag which is fast-trending on Twitter: #DontDeportMelania.
#DontDeportMelania is currently the #3 trending hashtag in the US at 26.4k retweets, edging out #TrumpSlump which stands at 24.3k retweets. Even Vanity Fair is asking Trevor’s question.
And what are the Dotard Dictator’s top-tier immigration violations he’s currently raging about as the most egregious infractions that has Trevor on to Trump’s real agenda...deporting Melania?
- Immigrants are working in the US while here on temporary visas
Melania Trump was paid for 10 modeling jobs in the United States worth $20,056 that occurred in the seven weeks before she had legal permission to work in the country.
According to “detailed accounting ledgers, contracts and related documents from 20 years ago,” between September 10 and October 15, 1996 she was allowed to be in the United States and look for employment but not to do paid work in the country.
Her lawyer, reported the AP, said she obtained a B1/B2 visitors visa and then arrived from Slovenia on August 27, 1996 — before getting an H1-B work visa on October 18 of that year.
- Immigrants abuse “special status” visas when they lack appropriate standing
Melania exploited the EB-1 “Einstein Visa” program loophole to obtain her Green Card.
Only 3,375 other EB-1 Visas were allotted the year Melania received her “Einstein Visa” and those were only issued to immigrants who demonstrated sustained international regard in the area of the arts, academic scientific research, business, or athletics.
According to the WaPo: In 2000, Melania Knauss, a Slovenian model dating Donald Trump, began petitioning the government for the right to permanently reside in the United States under a program reserved for people with “extraordinary ability.”
Knauss’s credentials included runway shows in Europe, a Camel cigarette billboard ad in Times Square and — in her biggest job at the time — a spot in the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, which featured her on the beach in a string bikini, hugging a six-foot inflatable whale.
EB-1 recipients, according to Rita Sostrin, a Los Angeles-based lawyer who has written extensively about the “Einstein Visa” says “[EB-1] Recipients are supposed to be the best of the best.” Perhaps this explains why, in an attempt to compensate for her unearned special visa status, FLOTUS named her anti-cyberbullying initiative the curiously ungrammatical “Be Best.”
- Immigrants that might ever use any government benefit should be denied visas and citizenship
The Trump administration is moving forward with regulations that are expected to dramatically reshape the U.S. immigration system by denying green cards and visas to immigrants who use — or are expected to use — a wide range of federal, state and local government benefits, including food stamps, housing vouchers and Medicaid.
The final version of the "public charge" rule, which has been a top priority for immigration hard-liners in the White House, is set to be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday. The purpose is to clarify existing law, which is designed to ensure that immigrants do not become dependent on the government.
Would that include refusing a green-card to a one-time model immigrant who eventually came to run up a protective services bill on the taxpayer dime of over $1 million a day when she stays in her New York abode? And I do believe Melania’s medical expenses are covered by the government.
Under these guidelines, almost any immigrant could be said to “possibly” someday draw some kind of benefit from the government...I mean, who would have guessed that Melania was going to be FLOTUS drawing down millions charged to the “public charge” via just her protection detail when she arrived from Slovenia in 1996?
- Immigrants are taking advantage of the system by exploiting “Chain Migration”
President Donald Trump pushing his immigration agenda in a speech in January spoke out again against people who come to the United States through "chain migration"
Trump continued that they are "sick, demented laws that have to be changed," ripping on people who enter the U.S. through the lottery or chain migration, a term used to reference a program that allows U.S. citizens to sponsor their immediate family members for legal residency.
"The people that are sent to our country are not the people that we want," Trump announced. "They come in through the lottery, they come in through chain migration."
It this very program that first lady Melania Trump used to put her parents from Slovenia on the path to American citizenship, which they rapidly completed in 2018. As Trevor noted, according to Trump this “makes Donald’s in-laws outlaws.”
- ...and don’t get Donnie started on migrant mothers putting down roots in the US via “Anchor Babies”
“Anchor Baby” is a pejorative used to refer to a child born to a non-citizen mother in a country that has birthright citizenship which could help the mother and other family members gain legal residency.
Note that although Barron Trump’s father is a US citizen, his mother Melania was not a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth.
In October of 2018, in a move that most legal experts say would run afoul of the Constitution. Trump vowed to sign an executive order that would seek to end the right to U.S. citizenship for children born in the United States to noncitizens.
“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” Trump said. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”
"The birthright citizenship, the anchor baby ... it's over, not going to happen."
In fact, more than 30 countries, including Canada and Mexico, have similar policies.
Even though such an EO is unconstitutional it seems likely that Trump fantasizes about the power to wave his pen and with one stroke delegitimize any child born a citizen in America that has one parent who wasn’t a citizen at their birth. Including Barron?
Let’s not even get started on what convoluted law Stephen Miller would have to concoct to strike birthright citizenship for children born to one non-white non-citizen, but would usher thorough the Trump siblings (four of whom were born to immigrant wives of DJT.)
With his personal history of three failed marriages, an abundance of affairs, and scads of one-night stands, if Trump had even a scintilla of knowledge of Western History he’d probably be envious of ole Henry VIII and how he solved his “unwanted wife” problem — five times. The saga of Henry's unions are memorialized in the slogan: “Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.”
If King Henry were alive today one could imagine the short-tempered Tudor resorting to tweeting out the hashtag: #DeportCatherineOfAragon.
In that light, it's not so far fetched to see why Trevor's world-class concern trolling with #DontDeportMelania is ironically trending.
Then again, if Trump were to send a little ICE van her way one day…