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Melania Trump probably wouldn’t pass her husband’s ‘merit-based’ immigration test
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President Trump married not one but two immigrants. But it’s the sketchy process by which wife no. 3, Melania Trump, moved to the United States and worked here as a model that became a contentious issue during his 2016 campaign, given the way then candidate-Trump railed against immigrants in general and “illegal” immigrants in particular. Related Articles Melania Trump’s nude photos: Who leaked them? Melania Trump’s nude photos raise questions: did she come to the US legally? Melania Trump: 10 fun facts about our new first lady’s fabulous, scandalous life In the past week, the president has endorsed a new “merit-based” immigration bill, an endorsement that could prompt renewed scrutiny into the first lady’s immigration history. That’s because, if such a system were in place when Melania first moved to the United States in 1996, she wouldn’t stand a chance of being able to stay, start a career as a fashion model or meet a rich husband. Melania’s immigration history first faced scrutiny last summer when nude photos, taken of her when she first came to the United States, were published in the New York Post; questions arose over whether the photos were taken when she was just here on a tourist visa. Subsequent reporting showed that Melania first came to the United States on a tourist visa in August 1996. A few months later, she obtained an H-1B visa for “skilled workers,” according to the Associated Press. There’s some question about whether she did some modeling work before getting her H-1B visa as well as how she obtained a green card in 2001 — due to her “extraordinary ability as a model,” it was said — before marrying Trump in 2006 and becoming an U.S. citizen, Vox.com reported. The newly proposed Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act aims to reduce the number of low-skilled immigrants who are allotted green cards by 50 percent and would impose a merit-based system, grading aspiring immigrants according to specifics such as age, education, English-language ability, high-paying job offers, international honors and commitment to entrepreneurship. Get more celebrity news and photos delivered to your inbox for free on weekdays. Sign up for our Coffee Break newsletter here. The bill favors people between the ages of 26 and 30; with doctorates in a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) field; high English proficiency; a job offer with a salary of $155,000 or more; and a Nobel Prize or other International honor. To be eligible to apply for a visa under this proposal, applicants need to score at least 30 points. At the time Melania came to the United States, she would only have had one thing going for her: She was 26 and therefore in the prime age bracket. For more celebrity politics coverage. follow us on Flipboard. She probably spoke some English — enough to travel in the United States and that would get her some points, but would she be fluent at that point? That’s questionable. Meanwhile, she claimed for a long time that she had received a college degree in her native Slovenia but scrubbed such a claim from her official White House biography, saying she “paused her studies” at the University of Ljubljana “to advance her modeling career in Milan and Paris.” So, with regard to the new proposed immigration requirements, she’d only be able to say she had a foreign equivalent of a high school diploma. Meanwhile, there’s nothing in publicly available records to indicate she had a high-paying modeling job waiting for her in the United States. And no, Melania Trump had not been awarded a Nobel Prize or Olympic medal. Time magazine has an online test people can take to find out if they could pass the test. Washington Post opinion writer Catherine Rampell humorously noted that if Trump were an immigrant, he would probably would fail the test, given his age, the fact he only has a bachelor’s degree, his lack of of “extraordinary achievement” in terms of honors, and his questionable proficiency with the English language. He’d only score points for entrepreneurial initiative. Like our Facebook page for more conversation and news coverage from the Bay Area and beyond. Alas, Melania wouldn’t do much better. According to the Time test, she would get: 10 points for being 26 to 30 years old; but only 1 point for having a high school diploma. She might get 6 to 10 points for having what were probably “moderate” to “good” English-language skills at the time she moved to the United States. But she’d get zero points for not having a high-paying job waiting for her; for probably not having the ability to invest more than $1.35 million in the United States; and for never winning a Nobel Prize, Olympic medal or other international award. At best, Melania could probably score about 21 points, so there would be no visa for her. But who knows? Maybe exceptions would be made for immigrants like Melania, as American journalist Julia Ioffe pointed out in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. Reading this on your phone? Stay up to date with our free mobile app. Get it from the Apple app store or the Google Play store. Ioffe, who immigrated from Russia as a little girl and spoke no English but who now writes for the Atlantic among other publications, said Melania is the “right kind of immigrant,” at least in the minds of Trump and his supporters. “She is a beautiful white woman from Europe, and we like those,” Ioffe said. |
Interesting article.
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