Status of Melania Trump’s parents raises questions of ‘chain migration’
Now permanent residents, father, mother sponsored by first lady, lawyers say
WASHINGTON— The parents of first lady Melania Trump have become legal permanent residents of the United States and are close to obtaining their citizenship, according to people familiar with their status, but their attorney declined to say how or when the couple gained their green cards.
Immigration experts said Viktor and Amalija Knavs very likely relied on a family reunification process that U.S. President Donald Trump has derided as “chain migration.”
The Knavses, formerly of Slovenia, are living in the country on green cards, according to Michael Wildes, a New York-based immigration attorney who represents the first lady and her family.
The Knavses are now awaiting scheduling for their swearing-in ceremony, according to a person with knowledge of the parents’ immigration filings.
Questions over the Knavses’ immigration status have escalated since Trump campaigned for the White House on a hard-line anti-immigration agenda. Those questions grew sharper last month, when the president proposed ending the decadeslong ability of U.S. citizens to sponsor their parents and siblings for legal residency in the United States.
Trump has repeatedly blasted the long-standing policy as “chain migration.” In last month’s State of the Union, the president called that process a threat to Americans’ security and quality of life. Under his plan, he said, only spouses and minor children could be sponsored for legal residency.
But immigration experts said such a path would have been the most likely method his in-laws would have used to obtain residency that permits them to live in the U.S.
Matthew Kolken, a partner at a New York immigration law firm, said there are only two substantive ways Trump’s in-laws could gain green cards: by their daughter sponsoring them or by an employer sponsoring them. The latter is unlikely, as it would require a showing that there were no Americans who could do the job for which they were sought.
Both the Knavses are reportedly retired.
David Leopold, an immigration lawyer and a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the first lady’s sponsorship of her parents appears to be the only reasonable way they would have obtained green cards because the process gives preferential treatments to parents of a U.S. citizen.
“That would be the logical way to do it, the preferred way to do it and possibly the only way to do it under the facts that I know,” Leopold said.
AWhite House spokesperson and a spokesperson for the first lady declined to comment.
The Knavses have lived on and off with the Trumps in New York City for years and have been seen frequently in Washington since the first lady moved into the White House last summer.