When Trump Spoke on Deporting Immigrants - He Meant Just the Non-White Ones [Bimbo wife worked in U.S. without proper permit]
Melania Trump, the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and an immigrant from Slovenia, was paid for 10 modeling jobs in 1996 before she received legal authorization to work in the United States, the Associated Press reported Friday night.
The AP cited detailed ledgers from Melania Trump’s modeling agency as well as a contract she signed with the firm, concluding that she was paid more than $20,000 for the work over seven weeks.
The finding contradicts repeated statements from both Melania and Donald Trump, who have insisted that she scrupulously followed U.S. immigration law when she came to the United States as a striving model.
It also creates a potential political embarrassment for the Republican nominee, who has based much of his campaign on a vow to crack down on illegal immigration — including deporting people who have violated the terms of their immigration status.
The Trump campaign has said that Melania Trump came to the United States in 1996 and then met and began dating Donald Trump in 1998. In 2001, she received a green card that allowed permanent residency, the campaign has said, and became a U.S. citizen in 2006, the year after she and Trump were married.
“I am pleased to enclose a letter from my immigration attorney which states that, with 100% certainty, I correctly went through the legal process when arriving in the USA,” Melania Trump tweeted in September, when she released a lawyer’s letter outlining the history. The campaign provided no documentation of the narrative at the time.
The new information involves Melania Trump’s activities in her first weeks after arriving in the United States. The Trump campaign has indicated that she arrived on Aug. 27, 1996, holding a B1/B2 visitor’s visa. She then received a work permit on Oct. 18, 1996.
It is illegal to perform work for money while holding a visitor’s visa. However, the AP located records showing that she was paid for multiple jobs during the weeks that she held the visitor’s permit, including for Fitness magazine and the Bergdorf Goodman department store.
During that time, she also signed what appeared to be a standard management agreement with her agency, Metropolitan International Management, that appeared to have been executed on Sept. 4, 1996. [MORE]